🔗 Share this article

Jean Rhys stood as a lifelong stranger. Coming into the world Welsh and Creole in largely black Dominican society in 1890, she felt out of place across the globe – too foreign for the European continent, too Caribbean for Britain, too white for her island home, and much too female to receive recognition as a novelist for most of her existence.

Literary Influence and Curatorial Vision

Yet her literary influence expands steadily and inspire, particularly with US commentator and exhibition maker the noted writer. This collective exhibition is a heady, innovative tribute to Jean Rhys – to her works, her liminal status, her existence of limitless imagination in a post-imperial era – in the vein of his previous exhibitions-as-portraits of the essayist and James Baldwin.

Caribbean Origins and Artistic Interpretations

The exhibition opens with Dominica, evoked through a crimson painting of trees and vessels by Kara Walker, and a vibrant, emerald piece of flames and riders on steeds by Hurvin Anderson, two contemporary black painters examining the West Indies as a place so filled with colonial trauma it overshadows its beauty.

Dominica was the author’s childhood residence, and the motivation for her seminal novel, her final work, a backstory to Jane Eyre that gave voice to the mixed-race outcast in the attic” of Charlotte Brontë’s book. Celia Paul’s wide-eyed portrait of Brontë stares wildly out of a small painting, while another painter’s gorgeous painting of a young woman wrapped returns the gaze. Als is merging directly related work with artworks that evoke a broader feeling of Rhys and her milieu, and it’s completely immersive – it immerses you in her humid, isolating reality.

Continental Experiences and Artistic Depictions

The writer departed from her homeland as a teen and traveled to Europe, where she journeyed, worked, entered multiple unions. A pair of vividly colored works by Florian Krewer illustrate figures contorting and moving, vintage photos are overflowing with provocative suggestion, there are snapshots of Parisian streets, paintings of grubby rooms, a twisted sculpture, a grubby abstract. Interwar Europe, at least for Rhys, was all sex, squalor, affection and creativity.

Return to Roots and Transcending Time

On the lower level, we’re transported to the Caribbean, and then back again to England, as Rhys travels between the locations. A massive vista by Reggie Burrows Hodges drenches you in jungle sweat, a dress that belonged to Rhys stands before it on a light-colored form – petite, but not overwhelmed by what surrounds it.

Chronology becomes ambiguous when any of the works are from. Contemporary scenes aren’t vastly different from an 19th-century print of a Dominican bay, history seems to be overlapping throughout the show. Passion returns in an astonishing, large, swirling, textured figure study, and a wall of paintings, before the final room examines authors from the region who were inspired and influenced by Rhys.

Critiques and Highlights

Not everything here is effective – a couple of sketches look careless and contribute little, and a graphic drawing looks like a tacky newspaper cartoon – but the show is still a remarkably accomplished example of curatorial art.

Atmosphere and Memory

The curator has painted a portrait of Rhys through artifacts, historical documents and visual works. It’s not dictatorial, it doesn’t particularly have a narrative – it banks on mood, on establishing an atmosphere of tropical warmth, throbbing desire, racial tension and emotional isolation. It’s like walking through memories, glimpses of a bygone era. It allows the spirit of Rhys, her life and her world, unfold in your head.

Accessibility and Impact

Is it necessary to have read the novel and the classic to appreciate? Certainly, many may not have but the exhibition’s concepts are rich enough to keep you hooked, and have you bathing in the chilly, dangerous waters of her iconic work.