Deborah Anzinger made a new body of paintings with cookshop charcoal, an essential but undervalued and loosely protected natural resource in Jamaica. Within the paintings the sublime quality of nature itself is the focal point as the charcoal transforms from its intrinsic and urgent worth as essential fuel for survival in local informal economies, into an aesthetic gesture of surrealism and luxury consumer by-product whose value is tied to parameters removed from local realities of black communities in the global south. Deborah’s paintings at MacDowell continued the building of a visual language for reconfiguring how the body is understood beyond a legacy of imperialism, physically shifting how we see the value of resources, and ultimately positing the question, how does this value shift feedback into the local socio-economic and environmental reality in a life-giving way? In addition to paintings, Deborah continued editing video footage and audio tied to her work in Maroon Town, Jamaica as part of a 2020 Soros Arts Fellowship. Deborah has been awarded a 2022/2033 residency at Denniston Hill and will present at the Loophole of Retreat: Venice conference in 2022.
