Statement:

Tatum’s prints consist of graphite screen prints on paper. He folds paper sheets containing his print images into various multi-faceted objects and combines them together to create sculptural wall hangings. These wall hangings are usually large in scale. Previous examples of his wall hangings range from 140x215 cm to 120x460 cm. The works were featured at Tatum’s solo showcase Looking Back and Thinking Ahead, which was on display at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands in June 2017. The works were also shown at the Carifesta XIII showcase in Barbados during August 2017.

Many of the images Tatum sources for his screen prints are collected from the Cayman Islands National Archives (CINA). He also collects images from Caymanian family photograph collections. He is interested in using images placed within his wall hangings as monumental objects to provoke narratives of missing identities and to show the importance of photographs to maintain memory in modern society. He often chooses images of unidentified people to assist this narrative and questions whether these images should be archived if the identity of the people captured in the photographs no longer exist in the historical memory of the photograph owner. Tatum is also interested in how his chosen materials for printmaking affect the outcome of the works. He believes that situations created from the materials can greatly impact the narrative of the prints he produces. For example, some images become disrupted when they are reproduced with graphite powder. This causes the visual identity of the people within those images to be removed and refines the visual importance of their identity. In this way, the ghosts of the unidentified people are allowed to be released from the image through the process-based abstraction of the graphite powder material shifting through the screen printing process. Furthermore, Tatum also enjoys using newsprint paper as an image surface and as a structural material that is portable. He believes newsprint paper allows his images to become more diverse when they take the form of the paper objects he creates for the wall hangings.

Statement:

These water tanks were originally created for a solo exhibition that was held at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) in June 2017. The tanks are mixed media containers that hold arrangements of ceramic portrait busts and artificial flowers in water. The containers have lighting systems that are placed in their hoods. The lighting systems allow the tanks to be viewed in both lit and non-lit gallery settings. The tanks range in sizes from 10 gallons (56x30x30 cm) to 40 gallons (97x51x23 cm). 

The format of the water tanks resemble the design of traditional Caymanian gravestones that are shaped like little houses and can be found in the eastern districts of Grand Cayman. Those stones were originally created to symbolize house offerings for the spirits, and they also served the practical purpose of grave markers for the people who were buried in the sand below them. However, as time passed the gravestones were displaced by tropical storms and other developments. They were moved from their original locations and the people they were supposed to identify were forgotten. Tatum found it interesting how these gravestones became structures that were important to identify a person, but lost their specificity after being displaced by the tropical weather. The stones themselves now function as ghosts representing the presence of lost human spirits, and in this instance the human presence is adopted by a geometric sculpture.

With his tanks, Tatum combines different ways to represent a human presence by placing figurative, ceramic sculptures and the geometric, house structures of the Caymanian gravestones together in a single unit. His tanks become further developed when they use water to submerge ceramic sculptures and artificial flowers together as installations for water burials.

Statement:

From November 2017-January 2018, Tatum completed an artist residency with the Leipzig International Artist Programme (LIA).  While in Germany, he visited the Albertinum Museum in Dresden and viewed several displays of broken objects from classical public sculptures. He was amused with these objects and how they were being displayed in glass cases. The objects were transformed, taken out of their original context and given a new meaning because of their physical lifespan and the history of their movement from one location to the next. He liked this idea of replacing objects and monitoring their lifespan to generate meaning and cultural memory. Tatum wanted to continue this idea through his own sculptural works by matching the format of broken, displaced objects with a narrative for contract workers which he discovered during his time in Germany.  

Tatum discovered that during GDR times, many contract workers from Cuba, historically referred to as gastarbeiter meaning “guest worker”, were brought to Leipzig to fulfill temporary work placements within factories and other industries. These Cuban contract workers were brought to Germany as part of a trade agreement between GRD Germany and Cuba. This agreement assigned Cuban contract workers to live and work within Germany for fixed salaries, and they were not allowed to intermix with the German public. After the trade agreement was removed, the Cuban workers were uprooted from their locations in Germany and sent back to Cuba. He became concerned with the negative outlook of this narrative. Moreover, Tatum decided to embrace the negative outlook of the narrative and explore this sense of replacement within the sculptural format he witnessed from the Albertinum Museum.

For the three months Tatum spent in Leipzig, he created nine portrait busts from clay to represent displaced people. He had these clay works placed on display during the Sense of Place exhibition in the Spinnerei Winter Rundgang. After the showcase, he shattered the portrait busts and had them buried in a garden area within the spinnerei campus. The burial ceremony was documented through video and can be viewed on Youtube or in select exhibitions. Furthermore, parts of the broken busts were saved and later re-used within Sedimente, the LIA 10 Year Anniversary Showcase. These objects and the documentation of their lifespan propel forward Tatum’s interest for object replacement, and they begin to negotiate between the value of the object as a physical form and the value of the objects influence through its transformation from one location to another.

All exhibition photos credited to Spinnerei and Walther LeKon.

Statement:

From November 2017-January 2018, Tatum attended an artist residency with the Leipzig International Artist programme in Leipzig, Germany. During his time in Leipzig, he created new paintings. These works were made with liquid graphite and acrylic placed on paper and acetate cut-out forms. The paintings were placed on wallpaper collected from hardware stores in Leipzig. The cut-out forms in the paintings are arranged upwards and turn into hybrid creatures and combine aspects of tropical plants, human faces and human appendages.

The paintings were inspired by a narrative Tatum discovered while living in Leipzig. He discovered that during GDR (German Democratic Republic) times, many contract workers from Cuba , historically referred to as gastarbeiter ( meaning “guest worker”), were brought to Leipzig to fulfill temporary work placements within factories and other industries. The Cuban contract workers were brought to Germany as part of a trade agreement between GRD Germany and Cuba. This agreement assigned Cuban contract workers to live and work within German factories, like the Spinnerei, for fixed salaries, and they were discouraged from intermixing with the German public. After the trade agreement was removed, the Cuban contract workers were uprooted from their locations in Germany and sent back to Cuba. Tatum became concerned with the negative outlook of this narrative. The act of diaspora created from the design of contract workers caused the Cuban people to be bartered into unfamiliar locations like trading goods. He felt that this act was a result of a very complex social order in GDR Germany, and he wanted to address the previous existence of these contract workers within the historic Spinnerei complex. Therefore, he attempted to address the existence of these contract workers by painting multiple hybrid creatures that were placed on the wall of the Spinnerie complex and combined together to make a tropical mural.

Tatum’s mural responded to the contract worker narrative by using hybrid, tropical creatures to challenge the industrial format of the Spinnerie and turn it into a tropical space. Moreover, the creatures were also made to be portable painting objects that travel after their initial presentation in Leipzig. Tatum designed the paintings to disassemble into various parts and travel lightly within a 61x77x15cm box. The creatures are adaptable and will shift their orientation when reassembled in new locations. The temporary manner of the creatures allow them to make a tropical mural that displays a unique presence, yet it is not fixed to any one location. Instead, they move quickly and are defined by their transportation. The portability and temporary state of the creatures make them similar to the designed roles of the Cuban contract workers whose presence they represent.

The Tropical Forms were later redesigned for the Arrivants Exhibition which featured at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society in Bridge Town, Barbados in November 2018, and for the Tropical Visions exhibition at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands in June 2019. Tatum also adapted the Tropical Forms into a digital work that was used for the Toof Prints public art project curated by Kriston Chen in Oranjestad, Aruba in August 2018.

Moreover, Tatum recognizes that the idea behind the Tropical Forms has evolved from the specific narrative of the Cuban contract workers, and they now attempt to promote discussion about migration caused by political matters and how such movement encourages sexual encounters and coupling between different cultural groups. Tatum realizes that migration is historically recognized by both positive and negative circumstances, but feels that hybridizing should be embraced.

My drawing installation, titled Couples, was inspired from an interaction I had years ago while living near St. Louis. I met a retired couple who spent many winters vacationing on my home island, Grand Cayman. The couple gave me several tourist pamphlets they had collected from beach condos and hotels that were on my home island during the 1960s and 1970s. I found the images and the text in the pamphlets to be problematic because they seem to be strictly targeting heterosexual, white American couples who were seaching out “romantic” Caribbean resorts. I decided to challenge the pamphlets by making an installation that depicts four couples (either people of colour or same sex couples) in airplane seats, shown smoking, smiling or locked in arms. The installation has several components including the vintage tourist pamphlets for Grand Cayman, vinyl graphics depicting flight attendants and airplane seats, vinyl text and four framed charcoal drawings on paper. The drawings on paper visually challenge the fantasies provoked by the original tourist pamphlets by showing fantasies made for people of colour and same sex couples instead of heterosexual white couples. The drawings use various techniques to create transparencies and small graphics placed around the margins of the couples in the center of the paper. The drawings are monotone and full of subtle details which require much time to explore; they counteract the direct, colourful graphic designs of the vintage tourist pamphlets which are also included in the installation.

Dimensions and Details for the Installation:

Couples, 2020

96x168 inches, 243x 426cm.

Charcoal, vinyl and acrylic on paper, wood, plexiglass, vinyl, vintage tourist pamphlets

These drawings, currently titled Souvenirs from America, are small images on paper that are framed and surrounded by vinyl graphics relating to the content of the framed images. The images were made during the time I spent in the United States in the summer of 2020. They depict tropical plants and figurines collected and kept in my apartment in Ohio, USA during that summer. Overlaid on those personal elements are graphics depicting moments from various American speeches presented in 2020 through social media, like political speeches, movie monologues, comedy routines, music videos and televised interviews. Each small framed image is a precious moment that gets extended by vinyl graphics. The graphics illustrate a larger context of the American black experience that I consumed through home media and had an impact on me during the summer of 2020. These drawing installations have become my American mementos, or my American souvenirs for the year 2020.

Dimensions and details for each drawing:

Souvenirs from America, 2020

Approximately 70x 60 inches, 177x 152cm

Charcoal, vinyl and acrylic on paper, wood, plexiglass, vinyl

Dimensions and details for four drawings:

Souvenirs from America, 2020

Approximately 96x 144 inches, 243x 365cm

Charcoal, vinyl and acrylic on paper, wood, plexiglass, vinyl

Statement:

From November 2017-January 2018, Tatum completed an artist residency with the Leipzig International Artist Programme (LIA) in Leipzig, Germany.  While in Germany, he visited the Albertinum Museum in Dresden and viewed several displays of broken objects from classical, public sculptures. Tatum was intrigued with these objects and how they were being displayed in glass cases. The objects were transformed, taken out of their original context and given a new meaning because of their physical lifespan and the history of their movement from one location to the next. He liked this idea of replacing objects and monitoring their lifespan to generate meaning and cultural memory. Tatum wanted to continue this idea through his own sculptural works by matching the format of broken, displaced objects with a narrative for contract workers which he discovered during his time in Germany.

Tatum discovered that during GDR times, many contract workers from Cuba, historically referred to as gastarbeiter meaning “guest worker”, were brought to Leipzig to fulfill temporary work placements within factories and other industries. These Cuban contract workers were brought to Germany as part of a trade agreement between GRD Germany and Cuba. This agreement assigned Cuban contract workers to live and work in Germany for fixed salaries, and they were not allowed to intermix with the German public. After the trade agreement was removed, the Cuban workers were uprooted from their locations in Germany and sent back to Cuba. Tatum became concerned with the negative outlook of this narrative. Moreover, he decided to embrace the negative outlook of the narrative and explore this sense of replacement within the sculptural format he witnessed from the Albertinum Museum.

For the three months Tatum spent in Leipzig, he created nine portrait busts from clay to represent displaced people. He had these clay works placed on display during the Sense of Place exhibition in the Spinnerei Winter Rundgang. The clay busts were placed on the floor, laid on top of wooden plant carts and rubber mats. The busts were placed together in pairs of two. Each bust sat cheek-to-cheek with its partner to create an intimate arrangement. The works were displayed so that their primary viewing angle was from above the busts. Tatum wanted to direct an exhibition format where people viewing the objects were looking down on them and thinking about the significance of looking down on other people (or in this case representations of other people). After the showcase, Tatum shattered the portrait busts and had them buried in a garden area within the Spinnerei campus. The burial ceremony was documented through video and can be viewed on Youtube or in select exhibitions. Furthermore, parts of the broken busts were saved and later re-used within Sedimente, the LIA 10 Year Anniversary Showcase. These objects and the documentation of their lifespan propel forward Tatum’s interest for object replacement, and they begin to negotiate between the value of the object as a physical form and the value of the objects influence through its transformation from one location to another.