Khadija Benn b . Canada 1986 ; works in Guyana
The digital photographic series Wanderer , 2012 – 2016 is an homage to the “ discovery and re-discovery of place … and the underlying histories that have created these complex spaces ,” states Khadija Benn . That this body of work relies on Guyana ’ s landscapes is a testament to Benn ’ s intimate relationship to home and land . The artist has witnessed how we appreciate land in its natural state and work to preserve it , as well as how we mine it for its precious core and irrevocably transform it . Benn spent her childhood in the mining town of Linden , in the northeastern region of Guyana , where bauxite , a main source of aluminum , has been the town ’ s staple export since the early 1900s . Later in her life , the artist ’ s formal training as a geographer and cartographer would lead her on mapmaking and heritage preservation assignments across the country .
In Amalivaca , 2012 , Kanuku , 2012 , Chrysalis , 2013 , Benn takes us to the Rupununi grasslands , the Kanuku Mountains , and the coral ferns in an abandoned Linden mine , respectively . At first glance , Benn ’ s polished painterly images , lush with color , light and a heavy-handed brush of glamour and romanticism , might appear as a replica of the pervasive ‘ picturing paradise ’ aesthetic we often see associated with the Caribbean and South American region . However , it is this very narrative that Benn seeks to exploit by inserting the female body , both her own via self-portraiture ( Amalivaca and Kanuku ) and those of collaborators ( Chrysalis ). In this act of agency , of claiming space and ownership of these sweeping vistas , Benn notes , “ Not wanting to contribute redundant pictorials of Guyana , I sought a re-interpretation of these places through portraiture … anchoring and abstracting the female body within the landscapes .”
While foregrounding the body against landscapes , Benn simultaneously employs what she notes as an “ erasure of the faces of the women photographed ” to remind us of the ways in which Caribbean women are often eroticized and hypersexualized in Western art . While rendering the subjects ’ faces pseudohidden or invisible , Benn implores the viewer to shift attention to the naming of the work . Amalivaca , for example , is a little known indigenous mythical figure of Cariban-Amerindian legend who teaches harmonious existence with the environment . In these dual countering acts of imaging and naming , Benn ’ s work combats the erasure of women from the historical record .
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