Project Brief

Alfalfa Studio was asked to design a book featuring the work of Laura Anderson Barbata, a multidisciplinary artist who works in conjunction with traditional stilt dancers from the West Indies, Brooklyn and Mexico, as well as three essays and an illustrated chronology that place her work in context.

Transcommunality examines the beginning of the project in Trinidad and Tobago, and highlights the way Anderson Barbata has integrated into her work The Brooklyn Jumbies, a group of stilt dancers from the West Indies and West Africa living in Brooklyn, New York and more recently collaborating with Los Zancudos de Zaachila from Oaxaca, Mexico. By uniting these two living traditions and working alongside them, Anderson Barbata bridges continents, cultures and communities creating astonishing work that melds contemporary art and cultural heritage practices.

Approach

The book features Laura Anderson Barbata’s iconic work with stilt dancers – Moko Jumbies and Zancudos – for whom she creates, in collaboration with community members and traditional artisans, costumes and wearable sculptures. The resulting works challenge the notions of collaborative community art, public art, performance, sculpture and tradition. In the book, we gracefully showcase the rhythms, processes, liveliness and collaborative nature of the work in a towering tome in which the photos tell the story.

Outcome

The landmark 240-page, printed-cloth covered volumes—one in English and one in Spanish—visually bridge Laura’s contemporary art with tangible and intangible aspects of cultural heritage through the use of color, understated but carefully choreographed typographic treatment, and a trim size (10×13.5 inches) that makes the gravitas of her oeuvre concrete.