“I decided to make my skin a living, breathing canvas”: Vybz Kartel at UWI

By Annie Paul

So the great Vybz Kartel had his day at the University of the West Indies yesterday. Invited by Professor Carolyn Cooper to give a lecture titled ‘Pretty as a Colouring Book: My Life and My Art’, Kartel didn’t disappoint. A huge throng turned up hours ahead and milled about waiting for Addi the Teacha (and Bleacha) to arrive. Kartel came prepared to discuss and defend the bleaching of his skin, complete with a powerpoint presentation that detailed his love of tattoos–which don’t show up easily on dark skin.

My skin marks (no pun intended) many milestones in my life and represents another form of expression for me. Example: The teardrops on my face are in memory of my close friends who have died. My sons’ names on my arms represents their birth and celebrates their life. You have the Gaza thug on my knuckles which represents the community I am from, the nickname of the community, and on my chest I have Love is Pain.

This paradoxical phrase is symbolic in that it represents the relationships that I have been in where at times I have loved and lost and also it signifies that the things that you love are the only things that can hurt you. Example: The death of a loved one as opposed to the death of a total stranger…so, love is pain. For me, although tattoos are on the exterior they really tell a different story and they tell a lot about my interior and not just for show but they can serve as a history book of my life.

‘Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eye’ Kartel said, flipping the script by recalling Haile Selassie’s famous words to the United Nations in 1963, quoted by Bob Marley in his song War. Kartel’s evocation of Selassie’s eloquent anti-racist statement to defend the lightening of his own skin may seem provocative but is also an interesting plea for a post-racism framework that does not automatically align bleaching with low self-esteem or racial self-hatred.

If Black women are free to chemically terrorize their hair into limp straightness why can’t Vybz Kartel lighten his skin if he chooses to??