La Vaughn Belle

Visual Artist from the Virgin Islands. Contact me at [email protected]

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The light coming through makes it shimmer a bit. Hmmmm. Ideas for future. #ledgersfromalostkingdom

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#LedgersFromALostKingdom #lavaughnbelle #cutsandburns #alernativearchives

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This life!

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Not finding as much anymore, so it's more of a delight when I do. #chaney #lavaughnbelle #ledgersfromalostkingdom

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Many of the houses in the Caribbean built by the African laboring class, enslaved or free, were done in such a way to be mobile as required during the plantation economy. Homes built to be taken apart, so the beams were often numbered. Here is an example on Market St, a block away from my studio. #thehousethatfreedbuilt #lavaughnbelle #freegut #ledgersfromalostkingdom (at Christiansted)

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First selfie of 2017

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"Los peces me están picando"/ "The fish are biting me". At a waterfall in Cuba at la Hanabanilla, an area in the center of the country with this expansive lake/river system. (at Hanabanilla, La Habana, Cuba)

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Love this one. #chinosorrie (at Christiansted)

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Process paintings. Hundreds of #chaney. Sorting through which shards I want to use. (at Christiansted)

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All-Female Boricua Art Collective Moriviví Brought San Juan's Controversial Black Flag Piece to NYC

The black-and-white Puerta de la Bandera caused uproar when it showed up in Old San Juan in early July, now its gracing a wall on El Barrio's 116th street.

From El Puente, Moriviví made their way across the bridge and way uptown to the heart of El Barrio. There, on the side of an abandoned building on 116th Street, they put together a powerful recreation of Old San Juan’s landmark Puerta de la Bandera in its most recent black-and-white incarnation. On their Facebook page, Moriviví spoke to the importance of giving visibility to Puerto Rico’s struggles on the mainland while creating a dialogue between the island and the diaspora, insisting that the black flag is “much more than a symbol of mourning.” “It proposes a new construction of our [national] symbols,” they asserted, “and an evolution of our collective identity.”

Moriviví is comprised of four artists who studied together at Puerto Rico’s Escuela Especializada Central de Artes Visuales, and began collaborating on large-scale public projects back in 2013. They takes their name from the so-called shameplant that is embraced as a symbol of femininity in the Puerto Rican countryside. Most recently they made headlines when they responded to the defacement of an anti-domestic violence mural with a topless protest on the streets of Santurce.

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Blanke in Danish means shiny, map in 1814 (at Nationalmuseet)

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Look at the mark making on the map to show bush (at Nationalmuseet)

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Actual original map of Bethlehem estate. In reproduction you don't see the the details of the paint to appear like tract of land (at Nationalmuseet)

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Degree (at Danmarks National Museum)

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Do you understand what these is really saying? Tax breaks to bring african women as breeders to make the slave trade more "efficient", meaning saving and earning more money. The real reason the slave trade was abolished in 1792 by Denmark (1803 effectuated) (at Danmarks National Museum)