Christie Neptune b . United States 1986 ; works in New York
Memories from Yonder , 2015 Multi-media installation : video ( 4 mins ), diptych of archival inkjet prints Courtesy of the artist
In this deeply personal work , American-born artist Christie Neptune mines childhood memories of her mother , a Guyanese immigrant in New York , and her love of crocheting — a craft popular among Guyanese women .
Invoking her own subjectivity as a first-generation Guyanese-American , Neptune digitally presents visual and textual narratives from a conversation with Ebora Calder , a fellow Guyanese immigrant and elder who migrated to New York in the late 1950s . Calder represents generations of Guyanese women , like the artist ’ s mother , who in the past sixty years have been part of a mass migration from Guyana to New York City . The installation relies on two portrait photographs of Calder that have been rendered distorted and obscured , a silent short video shown via a small monitor with its wild wiring on the floor , and text captioning the words of Calder in both American English and Guyanese Patois . Calder is depicted in the slow , methodical , rhythmic act of crocheting a red bundle of yarn . The amorphous object she is making is unknown . “ The gesture serves as a symbolic weaving of the two cultural spheres ,” states Neptune , “ to reconcile the surmounting pressures of maintaining tradition whilst immersed in an Americanized culture .”