Although this year's West Indian American Day Carnival Association parade has been postponed until 2022, we're honoring the day through Dindga McCannon's painting West Indian Day Parade (1976) which captures the vibrancy and energy of the celebrations that have taken place in the streets surrounding the Brooklyn Museum since the mid-1960s. Rather than depict the locality of central Brooklyn, McCannon sets the parade (which she frequented in its earliest years) in a stylized landscape with patches of celestial blue sky and layers of earth that recall a pan-African heritage. Each elongated figure draws inspiration from the extravagant costumes and festivities that enliven Eastern Parkway.
You can see this work on view in The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time through March 20, 2022.
Dindga McCannon (born New York, New York, 1947). West Indian Day Parade, 1976. Acrylic paint on canvas with gel medium, wax resist printed cotton fabric, screenprinted polyester fabric. 2020.26