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Through this controlled retreat into the past, I explore the fragments of souls given voice again to reflect on territory, on the encircling salt that courses through veins, and on the ever slowly travelling being back and forth wondering and wandering within waves.
Read MoreThis is a project that wasn’t realized.
It sat in the walls of the museum for weeks before it found its home elsewhere.
It was uncomfortable in space.
It was the one of many orphaned to the institution, yet it is still sounding,
resounding.
A warning and a battle cry.
Bodies are no longer held in check, here they run...they make noise and are unafraid.
“Bush Medicine Revival” uses medicinal yards and storytelling for community healing and environmental stewardship via the recovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the small island community of Bequia, St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Sour Grass is a team of creative facilitators who seek to work with visual artists in the Caribbean and across its diasporas, to build relationships with museums, institutions, collectors, biennales, and private and public entities through the development of curatorial projects, seminars, publications, workshops, mentorship initiatives, alternative pedagogy, and various types of discursive programming.
Sour Grass will act as an advisory and bridge to Caribbean-based and international cultural institutions and we will be sharing more news about the platform soon.
Read MoreBahamian Art & Culture shares an exclusive and intimate interview, as I reflect on the work done after four + years as Chief Curator of NAGB. I share my experiences while at the institution, thoughts on the Bahamian art community, all-around successes and regrets, what I would have done differently.
Read MoreMartinican poet and philosopher, Édouard Glissant, spoke of a rhizome—a type of powerful lateral-growing root system—and, just like this, we are able to move underground into the subterranean and sprout new growth to transform and shift our spaces. To be innovative, excellent and meet the magic and intensity of our creative minds let's put courage, truth and integrity as the values by which we measure all of our actions.
Read MoreThis is a recount from the 18th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil in 2014 and is a mishmash of travelogue, diary and critical reflection. This first instalment situates itself in the immense physical & cultural landscape that is São Paulo—a city simultaneously worlds away from the Caribbean, yet sharing an undeniable South-South connection—and begins to unravel the deep-rooted impacts of exchange.
Read MoreProspect New Orleans’ biennial Prospect.3: Notes for Now (P.3) was a phenomenal undertaking curated by Franklin Sirmans that looked at the multifaceted history of New Orleans through cross-cultural perspectives. This photo essay is an encounter which left an indelible mark on me as a searcher, prompting introspection about New Orleans’ unique position in the global North/South polemic.
Read More"Conversations in Isolation" is a series of ongoing dialogues with artists, writers, social scientists, queer activists, curatorial collectives, historians and indigenous thinkers, around the effects of COVID-19 in our local and global contexts from a Central American and Caribbean perspective. These conversations published periodically in Buchaca Generosa [Generous Pocket], a biweekly digital magazine edited by Daniela Morales Lisac and M. Paola Malavasi, and published by TEOR/éTica. For Buchaca #4, I speak with Miguel A. Lopez about implications for the Caribbean creative ecology and more personally towards the opportunity of this moment.
Read MoreBothriochloa pertusa or Barbados sour grass was introduced into the region as pasture and grazing options for livestock. This is a plant with polarity and duality, being steadfast in its uprightness during each dry season, yet extending the structure underground to help reduce soil erosion once rainfall returns to the parched territories. Barbadian artist, Annalee Davis, finds this plant underfoot during her morning walks and connects it to the remediation of the land and the quiet revolution that is happening within the internal landscape.
Read MoreOpacity is not transparency. Opacity is not an imposition from the West. Instead, it is an inward turning engagement with self, a knowing that allows space and being to be rendered with the past, present and future simultaneously.
Read MoreIn 2010 the lesson was death.
I inherited the gift of ARC through death.
It emerged from ash, from the salt and body of life, to find its own breath, colour and witness.
And now, it returns to ash.
In her solo exhibition ‘...there are always two deaths’ Tessa Whitehead speaks towards the landscape, violence, cycles of life and the inner workings of nature in conjunction with the sacred feminine. This writing takes us into her world of myth, magic, family trees, secrets and transformations.
Read MoreStorytelling, mythology and ritual are at the heart of Lavar Munroe’s practice. The narrative arc of ‘Son of the Soil’ parallels Joseph Campbell’s ‘Monomyth’, where the hero embarks on an adventure, finds mentorship and hones in on skills while sinking ever deeper into the abyss, until he is sharpened in the darkness to ascend from the unknown realm of spirit with new gifts. How does one learn from the hard lessons of the loss we encounter during the hero’s return? Here, the cycle is exposed, articulated and formed.
Read MoreNational institutions in the Caribbean are in a unique position to focus on expanding beyond the "National," by cultivating an ethos that impacts its local audiences that can be felt beyond their shores through dynamic programming which remains critical of its position, history and stories. Dominican artist Joiri Minaya unearths the intention behind her socio/political and feminist pracitce as a part of the Double Dutch series of intra-Caribbean exhibitions.
Read MoreIn a place like The Bahamas—and the wider Caribbean—the omnipresent cultural amnesia connected to slavery lingers and permeates the very essence of how we come to know ourselves. In this essay, I write about Scottish artist Graham Fagen’s ‘The Slave’s Lament’ and the counter-discourse amongst postcolonial Bahamian artists and thinkers who contest, poetise and extend charged narratives in multifocal and dynamic ways.
Read More‘Traversing the Picturesque: For Sentimental Value’ is a historical survey that includes works produced from 1856-1960 by visiting artists and expatriates to The Bahamas, who were inspired by the then colony’s landscapes, people, luminescence, coastlines, seas and bustling lifestyles. In this overview, I detail how the birth and development of colonialist imagery continues to have a long-standing and far-reaching impact on the global continuation of the iconographic status of The Bahamas as a haven, a place of respite and paradise.
Read MoreIn 2012, on a cultural visit to Aruba to be in conversation with Ateliers ’89–one of the oldest running informal art initiatives in the region–the seed of Caribbean Linked was born. In 2015, as co-founder and critic, I returned to reflect on the experience of bringing like minded artists, curators and writers from the region together, while still asking critical questions about its sustainability and impact on our shared space.
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