If Black Saints Could Fly 23 - James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition

Forrester’s approach to diasporic folklore is framed conceptually by his notion of “psychic homeland,” his multilayered sense of identity, belonging, and disequilibrium as a Guyanese American of the Caribbean diaspora. Each painting in the cycle features a frontally posed figure rendered with graphic flatness over an intricate allover pattern (which is made from the geometric shapes found on basketball courts). These figures take their iconic poses and trappings of saints and biblical figures largely from sculptures that decorate the ornate portals on the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres in France. Forrester is invested in situating Black men in the canon according to iconographic traditions in practice for centuries that typically codify white men in positions of power. Beyond replacing conventionally white figures with those historically denied such veneration, he subverts these very traditions by incorporating a multiplicity of