Nikolai Noel
Parasitic Periphery
Parasitic Periphery (P.P.) was a public art project, executed between May and July of 2008, in downtown Port of Spain, Trinidad. PP’s material components were over seven hundred prints of two-inch square, woodcut images were installed throughout the city.
If this work was diminutive, in the physical scale of its components, it was because it was part of a larger idea.
My feeling about the public artwork (especially the unsolicited kind) in this environment is to resist the spectacle of larger works that attract attention, but are just as easily overlooked. Instead, I receive my own sense of accomplishment when noticing something small - something that one expects to be overlooked. I imagine that there to be many others like me, and initiating a more intimate experience may make the work memorable. The gesture is then repeated in another location but not the identical gesture, so there is a story that unfolds that is suggestive and subversive.
The work consisted of iconic images, representative of expected/endorsed stereotypes or reworked symbols of sex, religion, gender, cultural export/dominance and trade. As I indicated, the woodblock prints were made onto two inch squares of gum strip (brown paper with a water-based adhesive on the back). The individual stamps then just needed for the adhesive to be activated by spit, water from a nearby drain or a bottle, and placed parasitically onto existing billings on the street, often political posters and other advertisements, making the installation process convenient and quick.
Obvious reference to American power and cultural dominance in the Caribbean was made with images of a cowboy/sheriff and Mickey Mouse and to China with a seated panda bear. More obscure references to gender policy in Trinidad were made with television sets, an ‘equality’ declaration, and Jesus blessing fingers that once inverted or positioned with other images in the set suggested new somewhat disturbing readings to the popular religious two-fingered gesture.
For me, the images began to coalesce into a vocabulary to articulate statements on a specific set of issues while remaining determinately ambiguous and open to varied readings. There is the seriousness of intent and message, and as is the case in most of my work, more than a hint of humor.
The work’s ease of application played a role in developing interesting rhythms in placement and presentation as the project went along. The work was always designed to be temporary, which, as well has, much to do with my personal feelings about the work of art and its unsol
icited imposition into the public space. That said bits of the parasitic periphery still occupy obscure corners and cubbies in the city of Port of Spain.
NIKOLAI NOEL (2008)
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