By Steve Scarpa
Artist Taisha Carrington hopes that her newest piece will leave a mark on Peabody visitors, quite literally.
Carrington, a graduate student at the Yale School of Art, was inspired by the Yale Peabody Museum's collections and recent temporary exhibition, Taíno Vive, to create a new work of art that questions how objects and encounters leave traces on people.
Her new interactive art installation, Soft Traces, was created as part of the Yale Peabody Museum's Summer Art Fellowship and is displayed on the Peabody's second floor.
"Inherited knowledge, language, memory, and ancestry are often intangible. Inspired by Taíno body stamps, I thought about how temporary identifiers can represent the ways our immaterial cultures are always part of us," Carrington said in her artist's statement.
A Taíno body stamp is a small, circular object made of clay or stone adorned with geometric patterns. The stamps, which carried social and cultural significance, were often coated with pigment and pressed into the skin to leave a temporary mark.
Carrington has magnified the scope of the original object. Soft Traces is an 8 ft. by 5 ft. monochromatic emerald-green installation, a woven wall made of wood, canvas, sisal rope, and cotton twine. The emerald-green color is a nod to the interplay between the sky, sun, and water seen across the Caribbean.
While most of what's on display at the Peabody is for looking only, touching Soft Traces is perhaps the most important part of experiencing the work.
The artwork fully exists only when a person touches it to create a mark on their skin - mirroring how the body stamps were used, Carrington explained. Soft Traces proposes that cultural identity persists through embodied experience, repeated gestures, and everyday acts," she said.
Carrington spoke with the Peabody and described the genesis of her artwork. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
"Soft Traces" was inspired by your visit to the Peabody's popular temporary exhibition Taíno Vive. Could you share a bit about how the exhibition prompted further artistic exploration?
I took a multifaceted approach. I wanted to go to the exhibition and do the things that someone visiting the museum would do and think about the aspects that inspired me.
The first question I wanted to explore was how museums serve communities, and how these temporary exhibitions come into those spaces. Then, how do they interact and impact the people that engage with it. That became my guiding method of exploration.
One of the overarching themes of Taíno Vive is that Taíno people are still here and they're still present. Their history was not fully documented, but it doesn't mean that they've disappeared or they've gone away. And there's an effort to revive this culture. So, I started thinking about how there are elements of ourselves or our families and communities that are also not as visible.
Those elements aren't always obvious, but it doesn't mean that it isn't a part of our history or a huge part of what makes us who we are.
Your response to the exhibition mixes the personal with the historical. How did that help you when you came to the moment of creation?
Yes, there is a bit of personal, a bit of history, and a bit of a community facing aspect in my thinking. Those three things led me to embrace one particular artifact from the exhibition itself, a body stamping tool from over 1,200 years ago. I did research on that object because I felt like it had the capacity to hold all these concepts.
My inspiration came from this tool, this physical thing that is used to mark the body as an identifier in Taíno culture. How could I use that as a metaphor to carry a story? Marks are a part of us even if they aren't visible - that idea became the core of the work. So, I developed this textured wall. You can touch the wall. And when you touch it, the impressions are left on your skin. So, that is directly translating my thoughts.
I'm focusing on the pressure and how it remains a part of your body for maybe 5 minutes, 10 minutes. After that mark fades, the experience doesn't disappear. It becomes a part of the body's history. I'm hoping that as people have that one limited interaction with the piece it then translates to every aspect of your day. You might see a chair mark on your leg, for example, and you'd remember this moment at the Peabody where my artwork made an impression on your skin. You might think through how the artwork explores this idea of how we are who we are regardless of if others can see it or not.
What do you hope that a viewer takes away from your artistic explorations?
Several years ago, I decided in my practice to not have my work feel too heavy. That's not to say that I don't address very serious issues, but I do believe positive emotions are a conduit for learning, safety, and kinship. So, I think by nature, there's always a level of joy in my work. I make the work with an open mind and spirit that I hope embodies a lot of things that can be perceived as joyful. I hope that it's present in the story of this work for sure.
There is another part of this, and there's no science behind it, but I think the viewer gets what the artist puts into a work. I can't say that any other way. So, I bring my best self and my joy, happiness, and commitment to the artwork with the hopes and expectations that it will be received to some degree.
The art is a place where people can connect. We can't exactly say what the thing is, but we share it. That's the moment that you hope for.
Photos by Andy Melien.