In Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s “The Book of Violette: The Boots,” a girl and boy gaze in open-mouthed wonder at a pair of red, calf-height boots. It wasn’t clear to me upon my first look why they would be awestruck by footwear. But elsewhere in the exhibition The Book of Violette at James Cohan Gallery (all paintings 2025), “The Book of Violette: Moving Mountains” depicts an older version of the girl flying through the daytime sky hoisting a mass of mountainside above her head, trees dangling from it askew and a small tiger looking mournfully at the viewer. I take this character as godlike not only because of her supernatural feat of strength, but also her long, furry tail and three eyes. I read that the reference is likely to Durga, a major Hindu goddess associated with motherhood, protection, and destruction. Perhaps the children in “The Boots” know that the footwear holds transformative power, as in fairy tales where donning a pair of shoes changes the wearer’s fate or gives them superhuman abilities.
“The Book of Violette: Auntie Maryse” is a frontal portrait of the girl, or her relative, as an adult, wearing a white dress and a tiara, her six arms in varying positions. Symbols of her girlhood are left on the ground: black Mary Jane shoes with white socks standing straight, as if the body’s memory held them upright, and a blue ribbon once worn in her hair, which appears in several other depictions in the show. The portraits mostly feature Sinnapah Mary’s schoolgirl avatar, Sanbras, who has appeared in previous exhibitions. Here, Sanbras is shown in assorted incarnations, including this vegetal version in which she has a human head with long, ribboned braids atop a plant stalk whose dangling roots bloodlessly pierce the auntie’s hands. Perhaps this marks her as a martyr, like too many women who sacrificed their powers to take up the quotidian role of bride or domestic partner.
Sinnapah Mary’s hybrid heritage has been much discussed in art criticism — she has South Indian roots and grew up in the French Caribbean territory of Guadalupe with an Indo-Caribbean identity. Certainly, the recurring technique of using her characters’ dark skin as a background for a toile pattern depicting leafy green flora and more colorful fauna evokes this. It’s as if the land is imprinted on them, marking them as undeniably belonging to the Caribbean.
But more is going on here. The various iterations of Sanbras allude to a burgeoning womanhood at a crossroads of celestial being and commonality. One version of Sanbras has five heads (“The Book of Violette: Anchored”); in another, “Invisible Vegetation of Desire,” a naked Violette lies prone on the grass, her watchful head turned toward the viewer, waiting to see what will happen next. This figure of womanhood is protean. She is many people. The show is named to honor the artist’s grandmother, painting a story about Violette that the grandmother did not write about herself — one in which she flew and became all the creatures of her dreams.
Kelly Sinnapah Mary: The Book of Violette continues at James Cohan Gallery (48 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan) through March 22. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
