Working primarily with printmaking and multimedia installation (video/sound), Gardner probes colonial archives from a postcolonial feminist perspective to unearth hidden voices and subvert documented (visual) histories.
The suite of thirteen hand-coloured lithographic portraits titled Creole Portraits III: “bringing down the flowers…” (2009-11), reveals intricately braided Afro-centric hairstyles entwined within the horrific iron slave collars that were used to punish female slaves accused of inducing abortion (some of whom were forced to wear the collars until becoming pregnant again). Each portrait also displays one of thirteen ‘exotic’ botanical specimens identified as having been used for this purpose in the 18th century. Delicately hand-painted with watercolours, as was characteristic of natural history engravings of the period, each portrait is ‘named’ for one of the botanical specimens using the established Linnaeun binominal system of nomenclature of the period in tandem with each slave’s plantation name; an act which parodies the imperial taxonomical systems. This collection centers on a brief revelation gleaned in Maria Sybilla Merian’s beautifully illustrated 1705 natural history publication, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium next to her exquisite hand-coloured engraving of the “peacock flower”, (Pulcherima poincianna), where she notes that slave women she had met in Surinam had told her they were using this flowering plant’s seeds to secretly abort their children as an act of political resistance against their exploitation as ‘breeders’ of new slaves and to protest the inhumanity of slavery.
Gardner is currently producing a print-based multimedia body of work centered on trans-Atlantic research carried out between Museum of London Docklands in the UK and various Anglo-Caribbean islands under a 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Visual Arts Project Grant. The first phase of this work, which focuses on the slave narrative of Mary Prince, will be presented at the Bermuda National Gallery in January 2016.
Born in Barbados, Gardner moved to Canada in 2000 and now teaches in the School of Design at Fanshawe College, London, Ontario. She holds an MFA from Western University, and a BFA (Printmaking) & BA (Film) from Queen’s University. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in the USA, Canada, Spain, and across the Caribbean; and in numerous international printmaking biennials. Major group exhibitions have included Brooklyn Museum, NY; XXXI Bienal Pontevedra; Art Basel Miami; 22nd and 23rd Biennials de Sao Paulo; and museums in the USA, France, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Spain, India, Barbados, and the Netherlands. Awards include the Biennial Grand Prize at the 7th International Contemporary Printmaking Biennial in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec (2011). Her work is held in several public collections including the Yale Centre for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico. International publications include Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge (Richard Noyce, 2010) and The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume V (Harvard U P, 2014). Her work may be viewed at www.joscelyngardner.com.
Varied Editions 