The Maroons: Rebellion | Ainsley Burrows
Aug 30 – Oct 15, 2022
The Maroons: Rebellion is an exhibition of eleven works selected from Ainsley Burrows’ broader series of the same title. The Maroons: Rebellion series, his most prolific to date, includes 125 paintings about the fight for freedom by enslaved Africans in Jamaica. These works reveal a shared history that includes the harrowing journey of the Middle Passage, the resilience of the Maroons in their fight for freedom, and the cultural knowledge that was both retained throughout and adapted to these experiences. Ainsley Burrows is a Jamaican-born artist currently working in Baltimore, MD, and Brooklyn, NY. His work explores unwritten histories and the emotional expression of ancestry and contemporary experiences. In these works, he utilizes a technique that he has named “Neo-Chaos” to imprint the turbulence of what he perceives onto the canvas.
Exhibition Reading List
Further Reading, provided by Dr. Sheena Mason
- Agorsah, E. Kofi. “Background to Maroon Heritage.” Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives, edited by E. Kofi Agorsah. Canoe P, 1994, pp. 1-35.
- ---. “Nanny, Palmares, & the Caribbean Maroon Connexion.” Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives, edited by E Kofi Agorsah. Canoe P, 1994, pp. 119-138.
- Barnet, Miguel. Biography of a Runaway Slave. Translated by W. Nick Hill, Curbstone, 1994.
- Bilby, Kenneth M. True-Born Maroons. U Press of Florida, 2005.
- Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. “The African Presence in Caribbean Literature.” Daedalus 103, no. 2 (1974): 73–109.
- Campbell, Mavis C. The Maroons of Jamaica 1655-1796, A History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal. Bergin & Garvey P, 1988.
- Diouf, Sylviane. Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons. New York UP, 2014.
- Glissant, Édouard. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays. UP of Virginia, 1989.
- ---. Poetics of Relation. 1990, U of Michigan P, 2010.
- Gottlieb, Karla. The Mother of Us All: A History of Queen Nanny, Leader of the Windward Maroons. African World P, 2000.
- James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Vintage Books, 1963.
- ---. Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History, edited by Christian Hogsbjerg. Duke UP, 2013.
- James, Cynthia. The Maroon Narrative: Caribbean Literature in English, Across Boundaries, Ethnicities, and Centuries. Heinemann, 2002.
- Lalla, Barbara. Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival. U of Alabama, 1996. Book is on order!
- NourbeSe Philip, Marlene. “African Roots and Continuities: Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving.” A Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays. The Mercury P, 1997, pp. 201-233.
- ---. “Dis Place: The Space Between.” A Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays. Toronto: The Mercury P, 1997, pp. 74-112.
- Patterson, Orlando. “Slavery and Slave Revolts: A Sociohistorical Analysis of the First Maroon War, 1665-1740.” Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, edited by Richard Price, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1996, pp. 289-325.
- ---. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard UP, 1982.
- Price, Richard. “Introduction.” Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, edited by Richard Price, John Hopkins U P, 1996, pp. 1-34.