Writing — Holly Bynoe

Essays, Articles & Musings

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These writings have been caught in the ladder of my throat for years. They have stumbled in obscurity, tumbled with insecurity, illuminated the path of curiosity for many creatives and now they are making light into this world as a way for me to define presence, criticality and engagement more holistically. Sharing is a lesson in generosity and truth-telling.

This is an assemblage of current and past work from the last fifteen years and is a glimpse into the microcosms of informal art spaces and institutional bodies across the Caribbean and further afield. The words, reflections, exposés and travelogues are portals to other ways of being, understanding and coming to terms with our post-colonial contexts, inherent messiness and transformation.

Radical With-nessing on Common Ground

Radical With-nessing on Common Ground

Bynoe shares on her experience at the recently convened Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) 2024 Triennial Conference whose theme ‘The View From Here: Sustainability, Community and Knowledge Systems,’ welcomed delegates from the four corners of the globe. Hosted in Auckland, Aotearoa, from March 3rd to 8th, under the radical hospitality and care of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Waikato Museum, these observations summarise important questions raised during the gathering around the possibility of decolonisation, aspects of collaboration, guardianship and community engagement.

ReportHolly BynoeApril 24, 2024Commonwealth Association of Museums 2024, Commonground, community buildingComment

Sprit, History, Mythmaking

Sprit, History, Mythmaking

I come from a place that has birthed orphans.

Beings disconnected from sanctuaries of support, from safe spaces that allow for the heart and mind to awaken, quicken, and bloom.

MusingsHolly BynoeFebruary 2, 2024methodology, vitality, spiritualityComment

How Mayreau Island in the Grenadines is tackling food insecurity

How Mayreau Island in the Grenadines is tackling food insecurity

Can scarcities and climate vulnerabilities offer us other ways of being and imagining? How are government-accessed funds, initiatives and projects being implemented and communicated to the public? How are these actions impacting community-based organisations and grassroots initiatives that have historically engaged in change-making work in their locales? Are there suﬃcient incubation projects accommodating habitat creation, ecological education, or invasive species management?

KnowledgeHolly BynoeJanuary 29, 2024we are mayreau, mayreau, the grenadines, small island developing states, food securityComment

Mayreau island is a cultural bastion where — despite challenges — community spirit is alive and adaptive

Mayreau island is a cultural bastion where — despite challenges — community spirit is alive and adaptive

This is the first instalment of a two-part post under the Shared Island Stories initiative, supported by the School of Art History at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, which explores ways in which to build collaborative tools to inform case studies in support of the project “Sacred Space and Social Memory: Interrogating Co-becoming in Community-Based Practices in the Grenadines and the Isle of Skye.” Funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with project reference: EP/X023036/1. Many thanks to Janine Mendes Franco and Skye Hernandez for the editing assistance and publishing on Global Voices ‘The Bridge.’

EssayHolly BynoeJanuary 29, 2024community building, we are mayreau, islandness, climate mitigationComment

Sour Grass participates in Summer Seminar: Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking

Sour Grass participates in Summer Seminar: Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking

Sour Grass has been invited to participate in the summer seminar “Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking” curated by Aneta Rostkowska, Nada Rosa Schroer and Julia Haarmann at Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen in Germany.

KnowledgeHolly BynoeJune 25, 2022Perma-cultural, Collective thinking, Sour GrassComment

The Art World, Migration and Gender: An Interview with Women on the Move (WeMov)

The Art World, Migration and Gender: An Interview with Women on the Move (WeMov)

Late in 2021, Women On the Move (WeMOV) invited me to be one of their stakeholders. WeMOV is a network of researchers engaged in the timely mission of unveiling women migrants' presence and participation in the construction of Europe. As an artist, curator, and writer, who sits on the periphery of these engagements, the following conversation celebrates borderlessness through all veins of my life.

InterviewHolly BynoeMay 18, 2022women on the move, art world, migration, gender, holly bynoeComment

Curatorial Multivocality through Caribbean Collaborations

Curatorial Multivocality through Caribbean Collaborations

Natalie McGuire-Batson writes for Issue 2 of Faire Mondes on curatorial approaches across the Caribbean region that have challenged and dismantled exclusionary global frameworks in visual art engagement. Nestled within this conversation with Annalee Davis and Katherine Kennedy, we discuss the collaborative projects that have birthed diverse archipelagic connections in an attempt to expand self-determination in a Caribbean curatorial context.

InterviewHolly BynoeFebruary 22, 2022curatorial multivocality, tilting axis, Caribbean Linked, Sour GrassComment

A Strange Kind of Knowing supports, "How to Sway on Crick Hill"

A Strange Kind of Knowing supports, "How to Sway on Crick Hill"

Artist, spiritualist and medicine woman Holly Bynoe’s film still of the gentle movement of wild cane fronds, or ‘arrows’ from How to Sway on Crick Hill (2020), draws on her deep interest in the spiritual and healing properties of plants, regenerative agriculture and ways of undoing the ‘plantationocene’. A Strange Kind of Knowing will explore nuance, intuition, the land, environmental cycles and phenomena.

ExhibitionsHolly BynoeOctober 24, 2021A Strange Kind of Knowing, Olivia Punnett, How to Sway on Crick HillComment

Catching Spirit: A Conversation with Healer Helen Klonaris

Catching Spirit: A Conversation with Healer Helen Klonaris

It is an honour to share this interview with writer, shaman, healer and my SiStar, Helen Klonaris. In "Catching Spirit," I sit at the feet of my elder as she shares on the uprising of ancestral technologies how to resource one's self through the dark night of the soul while sharing practices around trauma-healing and restoration/reparation. Helen opens her heart space and looks gently and candidly at the Caribbean's evolving social, developmental and spiritual ecosystems, expanding perspectives on how alternative healing methods and processes can innovate our strategies of thrival.

InterviewHolly BynoeOctober 14, 2021spirituality, shamanism, Helen Klonaris, Soul Healing wayComment

From a Daughter of the Soil

From a Daughter of the Soil

A part of work as Generator for The Hub Collective, this decolonial story of Bequia's ripe history starts with a look into the Indigenous Era, moving through the vagaries of the colonial battle for the Grenadines. Starting with piracy, the Black Carib uprising against the British and French and early settlements, we move through the rise of the whaling industry and our creative sea-faring resilient culture.

TidingsHolly BynoeOctober 13, 2021bequia, decolonisation, small island developing states, history, becouyaComment

Mothering an Archipelago of Hope

Mothering an Archipelago of Hope

Curator and spiritist Holly Bynoe reflects on the expansion of Obeah, a belief system of the Caribbean Black communities, and its relationship with women and their ancestral heritage to continue exercising care in the face of colonial extermination.

EssayHolly BynoeAugust 17, 2021obeah, spiritualityComment

Building empathy through culture: Taking a seat at your table.

Building empathy through culture: Taking a seat at your table.

The Caribbean, with its history of colonisation and the eventual independence for most countries, is already mostly out of opportunities with regards to its timeline of development in conjunction with the new world. The trauma of post-colonisation and the current wave of investment further strips away our integrity and humanity. It is crucial for these development and social initiatives to work in context with the situations that they find on the ground.

ReportHolly BynoeJune 28, 2021empathy, bolivia, creative nassauComment

In Conversation: Arts Beyond the Classroom

In Conversation: Arts Beyond the Classroom

The University of The Bahamas Visual Arts and Design (VAD) Department will be hosting 'Arts Beyond The Classroom', a virtual panel highlighting social arts initiatives in the Caribbean on Thursday, April 8th from 6:00 pm (EST). The panel is part of VAD’s 2021 event series "Pedagogical and Perceptual Shifts."

PanelsHolly BynoeApril 5, 2021the hub collective, Arts beyond the classroomComment

2021-2022 MoMA International Curatorial Institute Fellow

2021-2022 MoMA International Curatorial Institute Fellow

I am so grateful to have been selected to participate in this year's MoMA The Museum of Modern Art International Program for the 2021 iteration of the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL)—International Curatorial Institute. The two-week intensive programme comprises a cohort of 14 senior curators from the MoMA and other curators dispersed worldwide, focusing on areas that are oftentimes blind spots to the Western hegemonic gaze, including influential and creative minds from the Global South.

FellowshipsHolly BynoeMarch 27, 2021MoMA ICI Fellow, Center for Curatorial LeadershipComment

In Conversation: Heritage of Future Past

In Conversation: Heritage of Future Past

The three-day online event Heritage of Future Past curated by the British Council will highlight the value of cultural heritage and its contemporary relevance. Conversations will explore the links between heritage, history and power from the perspective of cultural workers who might continue to grapple with the vestiges of imperial legacies that remain in the Caribbean among other geographies.

TidingsHolly BynoeMarch 27, 2021in conversation, heritage of future pastComment

Letter #1: Throwing seeds, manifesting dreams

Letter #1: Throwing seeds, manifesting dreams

If this all feels like spinning plates, then I have managed to share a large part of my creative process, which involves listening in, being patient, taking risks and daydreaming.

MusingsHolly BynoeMarch 10, 20212020, year of infamy Comment

Beginning and End

Beginning and End

I can barely imagine what it looked like back then: sparsely populated, rolling hills of dry sour grass, small wooden houses with kitchens and tanks as extensions, thatched galvanized roofs, pineapple skirts on mothers, schooner filled harbours, wharf-less shores.

MusingsHolly BynoeMarch 10, 2021spiritual awakening, memory, childhoodComment