AOT Project Salon is pleased to open their new season with Like Clockwork, an exhibition of recent work by two American born Carribean artists, Corinne Innis and Xavier Basabe.

The exhibition lends its title from the classic Kubrick cult film and was chosen by Innis as a means to express the lack of moral compass demonstrated by Police Officers, and to suggest anticipation as well dispelling the epidemic myth… this is pandemic, and a time for enlightenment.

Corinne Innis—It doesn’t matter if you agree with the perspective of Corinne Innis’ work. Unassuming or obscene the graphic nature of images contained within her latest series grasp the attention tightly like the cultural frustration of which they were born. Innis tells the story of a grieving and angered segment of American society with cartoon imagery and text. Her daring body of work addresses a constant in America’s history with police brutality using imagery of her West Indian heritage. Playful “jumbees” (ghosts) and flowers adorn her Like Clockwork series. For the piece Clockwork, the repetitive use of jumbees seems in direct correlation to the on-going brutality against black America: Unlike other immigrants, as they ascend in social status and class, the threat of police violence remains. Jumbees, as they dance about, are the ghosts of victims and flowers their memorial, while the police officer rides confidently on the back of his powerful horse with virtual impunity thanks to job security.

Xavier Basabe is an autodidact painter and the husband of Corinne Innis-Basabe. With her guidance, his practice has flourished in a year’s time. His latest series, New Myths, is influenced by American Mythologist Joseph Campbell, and street art sensibility. The aesthetic of King Alemo portrays a staid state or a memorial to a God of long ago, the interpretation left to the viewer. Campbell spoke of mythological influence as both a public event and also a private fantasy: what you believe and how you perceive. In Incarceration, the face of a young boy hovers like a ghost, behind bars. These bars could be of a jail cell or representational of the limits society puts on the dreams and myth-making of a young black boy. Myth-making is a communal event touching all aspects of our lives, it is the birth of alliance; it is a tool to bring together self and other.