Alleviative Objects – Intersectional Entanglement and Progressive Racism in Caribbean Art

The global field of contemporary art is shaped by inter-racial conflicts. Alleviative Objects approaches Caribbean art through intersectional entanglements and combines decolonial epistemologies with critical whiteness studies and affect theory in order to rethink `Euro- and U.S.-centric' perspectives on art, race, and class. David Frohnapfel shows how progressive racism in the discourse on Haitian art recenters Whiteness by performing benign, innocent, and heroic identifications with the artist group Atis Rezistans. While the study turns critically towards Whiteness, it also turns away from it and towards the compelling contributions of Haitian curators and artists to the decentralization of contemporary art.