Untitled

David Boxer is one of Jamaica’s most important contemporary art figures as he is both an influential artist, and served as the chief curator of the National Gallery of Jamaica. As chief curator, a role that Boxer held for nearly forty years, he shifted the system of hierarchies that once defined Jamaican art history by asserting that self-trained, outsider artists, who he called “Jamaican Intuitives,” merited scholarly attention. These artists were thereby brought to the forefront of Jamaica’s artistic landscape. It is also largely believed that Boxer introduced mixed media installation to Jamaica’s contemporary art world. In his own work, Boxer explores this use of mixed media technique and the conflicting tension and synthesis of cultures that form Jamaican heritage. Boxer explains, “Very often in my work, I’m trying to deal with bringing together two cultures. I have African ancestry, I have English ancestry, and the two cultures clash. This clash is witnessed in my Memories of Colonization series set in English palaces with the African masks invading them…” Untitled, from the IDB Art Collection, alludes to this motif of the African mask, by applying the graphic qualities of those masks to the portrait of an anonymous subject.