In addition to the style and media used, the picture’s content is reflective of the formation of a unique hybrid culture. The piece depicts earth, with a few islands visible, juxtaposed with the sun and moon. The prominence of the islands indicates a focus on its inhabitants, the members of Caliban’s culture. In the center of the picture is a large orange semicolon; its presence represents a necessity for language, writing, and communication. Since the semicolon is a pause between clauses but not a full stop like a period, it serves as a communicative segue, just as the language of Caliban’s culture is a communicative segue between “prospero ling. / go” (English) and the native language of the Caribbean islands before they were colonized. The presence of the semicolon directly in the center of the picture emphasizes the hybridity of Caliban’s culture—it is associated more with neither Western culture nor traditional Caribbean culture, but is its own entity that draws components from both cultures. The semicolon is orange, which is the color opposite of blue on the color spectrum, making the punctuation mark stand out from the blue gradient of the sky, which represents the collection of all languages and cultures. Its vividness symbolizes the vividness and uniqueness of Caliban’s hybrid culture when compared with the rest of the languages in the universe—this culture is not a subset of another culture, and is an ideal fit for individuals such as Caliban faced with Western imperialism.
My piece is based on the these lines from Kamau Brathwaite’s “Letter SycoraX”; its style and components are meant to represent the emergence of Caliban’s inclusive, yet specific, hybrid culture from a disorganized group of individuals without traditional means of communication (Brathwaite 106). I chose to work in a collage medium, then digitally blur some of the sky components, in order to show that Caliban’s culture is purely the sum of its parts’ singular experiences. Each piece of the collage is a uniquely shaped strip of paper. Individually, each piece is a single person like Caliban who is unable and unwilling to fit into Western culture, and thus must seek out alternate modes of communication. When viewed as a whole, the pieces represent members of a hybrid culture who, while unique in their individual experiences, are ultimately the same in that they all reject Western culture in search of something more personal and fitting; these individuals will not accept a culture made “fe dem,” a foreign people who lack an understanding of hybridity, but require a culture specific to their own experiences. This interpretation is reflected in the poem when Caliban refers to “we / … a-we.” Here, we are the collective members of the hybrid culture, and when viewed as a group rather than solitary units, they become “a-we,” one hybrid entity. The collage style lends itself to a relatively unorthodox ambience, since the piece is comprised of relatively large blocks of solid color that, while put together with care, lack any kind of conventional shading or smoothness (side note: This may or may not nicely play into my lack of shading skills). This unusual style is representative of Caliban’s decision to abandon traditional fine arts and instead to pursue self-expression in a more unconventional way. The piece is digitally edited; the use of multiple media shows that Caliban’s hybrid culture is the product of multiple predecessors. Caliban’s culture requires input not only from the Western “computer / & mouse,” but also from native Caribbean culture. While the less technical collage method was used to create a basis for the picture, representing a native Caribbean culture, digital methods represent the technological advancement of Western culture. The marriage of these two methods represents the dual qualities of Caliban’s hybrid culture.
In addition to the style and media used, the picture’s content is reflective of the formation of a unique hybrid culture. The piece depicts earth, with a few islands visible, juxtaposed with the sun and moon. The prominence of the islands indicates a focus on its inhabitants, the members of Caliban’s culture. In the center of the picture is a large orange semicolon; its presence represents a necessity for language, writing, and communication. Since the semicolon is a pause between clauses but not a full stop like a period, it serves as a communicative segue, just as the language of Caliban’s culture is a communicative segue between “prospero ling. / go” (English) and the native language of the Caribbean islands before they were colonized. The presence of the semicolon directly in the center of the picture emphasizes the hybridity of Caliban’s culture—it is associated more with neither Western culture nor traditional Caribbean culture, but is its own entity that draws components from both cultures. The semicolon is orange, which is the color opposite of blue on the color spectrum, making the punctuation mark stand out from the blue gradient of the sky, which represents the collection of all languages and cultures. Its vividness symbolizes the vividness and uniqueness of Caliban’s hybrid culture when compared with the rest of the languages in the universe—this culture is not a subset of another culture, and is an ideal fit for individuals such as Caliban faced with Western imperialism.
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