IN KEEPING WITH MYSELF
DAINESHA NUGENT-PALACHE
Archival inkjet print, 50.8 × 50.8 cm (20 × 20 inches)
Archival inkjet print, 50.8 × 50.8 cm (20 × 20 inches)
Dainesha Nugent-Palache is a Toronto-based artist. Through her performative video works and photographs, she explores the dichotomies and paradoxes inherent in representations of Afro-Caribbean femininities. In a practice concerned with visualizations of Black diaspora across pasts, presents, and speculative futures, she produces portraits and other still life-based works. Through the artist’s exuberant approach to colour and display, her work often negotiates with forms of glamour, excess and other photographic strategies inherent to the visual cultures of capitalism.
In Nugent-Palache’s Imposition as Tradition, a black hand attempts to straighten her afro curls with a hair straightener. In As Light as a Paper Bag, her face is covered entirely by a brown paper bag, with cut-outs for the eyes. Both images are part of a larger series titled Come Brown Come Brown; Come Black Come Black, which is an exploration of the ongoing colonial impact on the contemporary psyche and culture of Afro-Jamaican women. The series signals the way in which physical bodies are subject to colonial beauty standards, which often sets individuals on a long road towards acceptance of their physical features.