Café Culture as Decolonial Feminist Praxis: Scherezade García’s Blame … Coffee

Lesley A Wolff

doi:10.3390/h10010035

Abstract

This article provides a decolonial feminist analysis of Latinx artist Scherezade García’s most recent portable mural, Blame it on the bean: the power of Coffee (2019), created for and installed in the café and library of The People’s Forum, a “movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities” and “collective action” in the heart of Manhattan. This artwork depicts three allegorical women convening over cups of coffee, one of which has precariously overflowed onto a miniaturized portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose undoing was said to have been facilitated by his excessive indulgence in coffee and other commodities of empire. Historically, coffee production was bound to imperial plantocracies, enslavement, and patriarchal networks; today, the industry remains a continued site of oppression and erasure for female workers around the globe. By placing this mural in conversation with the portable material economies of the Caribbean, the gendered history of coffee production and consumption, and the history of female representation in art, this article argues that the mural dismantles heteropatriarchal conventions precisely by invoking café culture—the very mode of social performance that García’s work critiques. In so doing, García subverts the problematically gendered and racialized heritage of coffee with a matriarchal Afrolatinidad that, in the artist’s words, “colonizes the colonizer.”

Highlights

This article provides an in-depth analysis of a previously unexamined mural by the renowned Dominican-American artist Scherezade García (b. 1966), Blame it on the bean: the power of Coffee (2019; hereafter referred to as Blame . . . Coffee), which was recently commissioned for the café and library of the New York City community space known as
Through an examination of this portable mural, I argue that García aligns her artistic praxis with the decolonial feminist theory María Lugones defines as the modern/colonial gender system
Amid the homogenous landscape of urban cafes that today populate New York, this mural intervenes to problematize the colonial and gendered values engrained through the history of coffee production and café culture

Summary

Introduction

This article provides an in-depth analysis of a previously unexamined mural by the renowned Dominican-American artist Scherezade García (b. 1966), Blame it on the bean: the power of Coffee (2019; hereafter referred to as Blame . . . Coffee), which was recently commissioned for the café and library of the New York City community space known as. Through an examination of this portable mural, I argue that García aligns her artistic praxis with the decolonial feminist theory María Lugones defines as the modern/colonial gender system. Amid the homogenous landscape of urban cafes that today populate New York, this mural intervenes to problematize the colonial and gendered values engrained through the history of coffee production and café culture. I suggest that through this work, García maps a feminist lens onto her critical vision of coloniality. By placing García’s mural in conversation with the portable economies prevalent in Caribbean arts, decolonial feminist theory, the gendered history and politics of café culture, and the history of female representation in art, this article demonstrates how Blame .

Portable Material Economies of the Caribbean

Mapping Coloniality through Coffee

A Seat at the

October

Portability and Belonging in the Dominican Diaspora

Conclusions