The Jamaica Biennial 2017 is currently on view at the National Gallery of Jamaica and Devon House in Kingston and at National Gallery West in Montego Bay and continues at all three sites until May 28.

The National Gallery of Jamaica blog posted a feature on one of the invited artists, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, whose site-specific video installation “8 Years to Freedom” can be seen at the National Gallery of Jamaica. Lyn-Kee-Chow performed in her installation at the main opening function on February 26.

Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow (1975, Manchester, Jamaica) is an interdisciplinary artist with a BFA from New World School of the Arts, University of Florida, (1996) and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York (2006). Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and she frequently participates in performance art festivals held in the United States and Asia. Lyn-Kee-Chow was commissioned to present both visual arts and live performance in the landmark exhibition Jamaican Pulse: Art and Politics from Jamaica and the Diaspora (2016) at the Royal West Academy of England, Bristol, U.K., and participated in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Digital (2016) exhibition. Lyn-Kee-Chow often explores performance and installation art, which draws from the nostalgia of her homeland, the commodified imagery of Caribbean primitivism, folklore, fantasy, consumerism, spirituality and nature’s ephemerality. She lives and works in Queens, NYC, and is a faculty member of the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.

See her artist’s page at https://www.jodielynkeechow.com/

For more information, see https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/jamaica-biennial-2017-special-projects-jodie-lyn-kee-chow/lyn-kee-chow-jodie-brown-girl_still/

In “Jasmine Thomas-Girvan Snags Second Aaron Matalon Award,” Tanya Batson-Savage (Susumba) reports the good news that Jamaican artist Jasmine Thomas-Girvan has made art history by being the first artist to win the Jamaica Biennial’s Aaron Matalon Award twice. Thomas-Girvan won the award for her two installations at Devon House—“Parallel Realities, Dwelling in the Heartland of My People” and “The Real Princess.” The award was announced at the National Gallery of Jamaica in downtown Kingston, on February 26, 2017. The Jamaica Biennial 2017 continues through until May 28, 2017, including installations at Devon House, the National Gallery West, and the main exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica in downtown Kingston. Please read the full article by Tanya Batson-Savage at Susumba. [Also see previous post Jasmine Thomas Girvan wins 2012 Aaron Matalon Award.]

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was born in Jamaica. She attended the Parsons School of Design in New York, where she received a BFA in Jewelry and Textile Design. Whilst at Parson’s Jasmine was awarded the Tiffany Honour Award for Excellence. Later she received a Prime Minister’s Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Jamaica, and in 1996 she was the recipient of a Commonwealth Foundation Arts award. She was the recipient of the 2012 Aaron Matalon Award of the National Gallery of Jamaica as the artist who made the most outstanding contribution to the National Biennial Exhibition. [Note: And now in February 2017!] Jasmine has also made a number of public commissions, one of which was presented to the Queen of England. Jasmine’s work has been exhibited in the USA, Jamaica, Trinidad, Venezuela and Mexico, and featured in Accessories Magazine, Skywritings, Shabeau and Caribbean Beat. Jasmine lives and works in Trinidad, West Indies. You can contact her at jasminethomasgirvan@yahoo.com.

See her work at http://jasminethomasgirvan.com/

See article (and photo of Thomas-Girvan) at http://www.susumba.com/art-design/news/jasmine-thomas-girvan-snags-second-aaron-matalon-award

Image of “The Real Princess” from https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/jamaica-biennial-2017-bulletin-5-the-biennial-devon-house/

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was the recipient of the Aaron Matalon Award in the recently closed Jamaica Biennial 2017. Her two installations were on view at Devon House in Kingston, Jamaica.

Description (NGJ): Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was born in 1961, in St Andrew, Jamaica. Thomas-Girvan attended the Parsons School of Design in New York, where she received a BFA in Jewelry and Textile Design. While she is still best known as a jeweler, Jasmine’s recent work has moved into the realm of larger mixed media sculpture and installations that evoke poetically the epic histories of the Caribbean. Thomas-Girvan has exhibited in the USA, Jamaica, Trinidad, Venezuela and Mexico. Her awards include the Tiffany Award for Excellence at Parsons, the Prime Minister of Jamaica’s Certificate of Recognition, the Commonwealth Foundation Arts award in 1996, the Aaron Matalon Award for her contribution to the NGJ’s 2012 National Biennial, and the 2014 Silver Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. Thomas-Girvan lives in Maraval, Trinidad.

For original post, see https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/jamaica-biennial-2017-invited-artists-jasmine-thomas-girvan/

[Above: Jasmine Thomas-Girvan’s “Parallel Realities, Dwelling I’m The Heartland of My People” (2016), installation detail.]

The British Council just announced that Jamaican-based visual artist Camille Chedda has begun her residency at Hospitalfield in Scotland where she will be based for eight weeks.

Camille Chedda was born in Manchester, Jamaica. She graduated from the Edna Manley College with an Honours Diploma in Painting, and received an MFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her works have been featured in major exhibitions at the National Gallery of Jamaica including the Materializing Slavery, New Roots and the 2017 Jamaica Biennial. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Albert Huie Award, the Reed Foundation Scholarship and the inaugural Dawn Scott Memorial Award. She has been an artist in residence at Alice Yard in Trinidad, Art Omi in New York and has been awarded a residency at Hospitalfield in Scotland as a part of the inaugural group of artists in the TAARE program. Chedda lives and works in Kingston.

External links:

Camille’s Website 

Camille’s Instagram 

InPulse Art Project 

Biennial Review by Rosanna McLaughlin 

[Top photo: Artist Camille Chedda’s; second photo: Camille Chedda’s “Catastrophe of Liberation,” Charcoal on paper, 2016; Source: https://caribbean.britishcouncil.org/2017-british-council-taare-artist-camille-chedda.]

For more information, see https://caribbean.britishcouncil.org/2017-british-council-taare-artist-camille-chedda

The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas presents “Double Dutch: Of Skin and Sand” with Leasho Johnson (Jamaica) and Edrin Symonette (Bahamas), which opens on July 21, 7:00-8:30pm, and will be on view until September 24, 2017. The opening of the project includes an artists’ talk with both artists. The event is free and open to the public.

Description: Double Dutch brings together artists from the region and diaspora to produce provocative bodies of work through collaboration and exchange. The project works against ideas of nationalism and the insularity of our creative environs by creating an experimental hub to explore regional and diasporic culture, our creative acumen and sensibilities.

“Of Skin and Sand,” brings together Jamaican artist Leasho Johnson and Bahamian artist Edrin Symonette, who have developed individual projects that speak towards issues of gender constructs, masculinity and sexuality within a Black Caribbean context. Boundaries are reinforced and broken down through societal and practical experimentations as they work in the NAGB’s Ballroom to develop unique installations that dialogue with each other in confrontational and powerful ways.

Symonette will continue to develop and refine his body of work that our public has come to know very well with the recent community project “Residues of a Colonial Past”, which was hosted in the gallery’s Sculpture Garden and then exhumed for the Project Space Room earlier this year.

With “The Ballad of Deangelo Johnson for Quakoo Street,” Symonette extends and regenerates new interest in the questions of how normative roles and performativity of hyper-masculinity persists and thrives within the Bahamian landscape; the actions that allow certain behaviours to exist; like machismo and chauvinism, while denouncing the honesty and necessity of black male vulnerability and care within our society.  This ballad personifying this “inner city” living will be expanded into a poem painted on the wall adjacent to the sculpture. Bahamian poets Deangelo Whyms and Tanicia Pratt are co-creators of this (ballad/poem) providing both male and female perspectives.

Johnson, who works in various public and private spaces across Jamaica and the wider African diaspora, will continue to develop his ongoing bodies of work started in Aruba at Caribbean Linked in 2014 with “Promised Land”, to the most recent installation of “Belisario & the Soundboy” at NLS, to the powerful “In-a-the-middle” installation at Devon House for the 2017 Jamaica Biennale.

Johnson, a prolific and engaged trickster, will produce “Playing the Fields”, a project that fuses his love for pop culture, dancehall and the complexities of black identity into an illustrative battlefield, calling to life an evocative landscape of vulnerable bodies and the emotional-scape of the dangers of coming into one’s understanding of self. Attacking the dark underbelly of misogyny and how the stronghold of patriarchy has altered male-female relations, the dancehall figure, which is ubiquitous in Johnson’s practice, collapses and is enveloped by the landscape allowing for freedom and for greater fluidity between the binaries that stiffen, reduce and homogenise our space. This project further explores the development of stereotypes through the lens of race: what does it mean to be a black male figure within the contemporary landscape? How is one viewed as one hides behind stereotypes, and what does freedom look like when we choose to confront the breaking down of these labels?

Johnson and Symonette’s work creates small moments for us to think about the ramifications of monolithic and single narratives. They give space to identities that are more complex than the colonial subjects that we often tout ourselves as being. Within this maze of refining our personal and social relations, we also look at the way in which intersectionality embraces the fluidity natural to our Caribbean lives.

See biographies and more information [and image above: detail from poster] at http://nagb.org.bs/events-and-exhibitions/2017/7/21/double-dutch-of-skin-and-sand-with-edrin-symonette-and-leasho-johnson

Galeria Nara Roesler-New York has been hosting a “Summer Guests” series. This time, they present “Material and Context”—with Caribbean artists Alexandre Arrechea and Nari Ward in conversation at the gallery on Wednesday, August 30, 2017, at 6:00pm. Galeria Nara Roesler is located at 22 East 69th Street (3R), New York, New York.

Description: For its last GNR Presents: Summer Guests, Galeria Nara Roesler has invited artists Alexandre Arrechea (b. 1970, Cuba) and Nari Ward (b. 1963, Jamaica) to talk about their practices. Both interested in re-contextualizing objects as a means to create social and political commentaries, the artists will engage in a conversation about their processes. Alexandre Arrechea is represented by Galeria Nara Roesler and Nari Ward is represented by Lehmann Maupin.

[Photo above: Nari Ward, Robin Cembalest, and Alexandre Arrechea at the opening of the Belkis Ayón exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, New York.]

Click here to rsvp.

Also see https://nararoesler.art/en/

As a follow-up to our previous post We Have Met Before: National Gallery of Jamaica/, here is a reminder and a series of important links provided by Annalee Davis (Caribbean Arts Manager, British Council).

“We have met before” is a collaborative exhibition that the British Council has been working on, in partnership with the National Gallery of Jamaica. It includes work by two British and two Caribbean artists: Graham Fagen, Ingrid Pollard, Joscelyn Gardner and Leasho Johnson. The exhibition opened on Friday, September 22, and was followed by a panel conversation with the artists on Saturday, September 23, 2017. The show will be open until November 4th.

A third iteration of this project will take place in Nassau at the National Arts Gallery of the Bahamas from March to June 2018.

The following links will provide you with information about the exhibition and the wider program:

The EPK for the project is available at https://caribbean.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/we_have_met_before_epk.pdf with links to the Artists’ Assets here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByZQwpgetDO1RG1kaFgtbkhVUUU

The PDF of the ePublication for the We have met before exhibition is available here: https://caribbean.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/we_have_met_before.pdf

The PDF for the ePublication of the Difficult Conversations project in Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago is here: https://caribbean.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/difficult_conversations.pdf

If you ‘like’ the Caribbean British Council Facebook page you can keep up to date with all their events and activities in relation to this exhibition and further arts programming: https://www.facebook.com/BritishCouncilCaribbean/

For more information, you may contact Andrea Dempster-Chung (Arts Project Manager in the Jamaica office) at Andrea.DempsterChung@britishcouncil.org.jm; Juliet Dean (Visual Arts Adviser in the Edinburgh office) at Juliet.Dean@britishcouncil.org; or Annalee Davis (Caribbean Arts Manager in the Barbados office) at Annalee.Davis@britishcouncil.org.

Also see a review at https://repeatingislands.com/2017/09/16/we-have-met-before-new-exhibition-at-the-national-gallery-of-jamaica-a-review/

Tamara Natalie Madden—born in 1975 in Jamaica and died in 2017 in the United States (Atlanta, Georgia) was a painter and mixed-media artist who taught at Spelman College. Madden’s paintings have been described as allegories, whose subjects are the people of the African diasporas. Afropunk writes:

Prolific artist and Spelman professor Tamara Natalie Madden passed away suddenly Saturday, November 4th, just two weeks after being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by family members. Named one of The Grio’s 40 amazing Black artists to watch in 2014, Madden’s work was a masterclass in Black beauty and Black talent, and it was exhibited across the globe. Despite this notable career, few outlets are covering her passing.

After a rare diagnosis and kidney failure that left her on dialysis in 1997, Madden discovered her passion for art, and credited it with getting her through that difficult moment in her life. Already a proven fighter, disease overcame this time around, and she is survived by a daughter.

“No one is more affected by this sudden loss than her only child, Nini, a senior at Georgia Southern University who also works three jobs,” the GoFundMe reads. “Tam instilled in her daughter a drive to succeed, and Nini has found her passion: she is pursuing a degree in education with a minor in theater, and has just started her teaching program. As we all try to cope with this sudden loss, we ask that you please give what you can to support Nini through this difficult time.”

In addition to the fundraiser, you can also support by purchasing copies of her book or prints from her website.

For full article, see http://afropunk.com/2017/11/renowned-atlanta-based-visual-artist-tamara-natalie-madden-suddenly-passes-away-cancer/

For more information, see http://www.tamaranataliemadden.com/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Natalie_Madden, https://www.facebook.com/tamaranataliemaddenarts/, and http://triblive.com/…/museu…/8256881-74/madden-says-paniagua

An exhibition of self-taught Jamaican artists—from Allan Zion to Zaccheus Powell—will be on view on November 15, from 7:00 to 9:30pm at AMAICRAFT, The Trade Center, 30 Red Hills Road (Shop #27), Kingston, Jamaica.

See original post at https://www.yardedge.net/art/exhibition-self-taught-jamaican-artists

The National Gallery of Jamaica blog has just announced the death of artist and educator Valerie Bloomfield-Ambrose (1934-2017):

The National Gallery of Jamaica has received the sad news of the passing renowned painter, sculptor and art educator Valerie Bloomfield-Ambrose on Tuesday January 9, 2017. Born in Glasgow Scotland in 1934, she attended the Glasgow School of Art from 1953 to 1957 and later the Jordanhill Teacher Training College also in Glasgow.  In 1980, she   received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from the American University. In 2012 she was conferred with a honourary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) Degree by the University of the West Indies.

She made Jamaica her home in 1959 and taught at several schools including Jamaica College, Wolmer’s Girls School and The Priory School. At Wolmer’s Girls School in particular, she is remembered as an inspiring teacher who motivated a generation of young women to pursue art as a career rather than a mere pastime.  Bloomfield-Ambrose also taught anatomy, life-drawing and painting at the Jamaica School of Art from 1970 – 1979 where she nurtured and honed the skills of many of Jamaica’s renowned artists, such as Hope Brooks, Carol Crichton and Philip Supersad, among others.  She also lectured at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. and Baltimore’s Maryland Institute.

Mrs Bloomfield-Ambrose played an active role in the burgeoning Post-Independence performing arts movement in Jamaica. She was an actress, appearing in numerous productions in the 1960s and 1970s and had acted opposite well-known actors such as Lloyd Reckord and also served as a set designer for many stage productions. It was in the 1960s however, that she began focusing on her own artistic career.  She initially shared a studio with Ruth Cohn and Moira Small with whom she had her first Jamaican exhibition in 1964. She later shared a studio with painter Graham Davis in 1971 and went on to represent Jamaica in the International Women’s Year Exhibition in 1975.

Though a classically trained painter and sculptor, her work was never considered to be traditional and she established herself with an unmistakable sense of realism and ability to capture likenesses. Her use of pastel tones to capture the unique light of the Caribbean was noted as having embodied the energy of the artistic milieu of the 1970s. Her talents made her one of Jamaica’s most popular portraitists.

Known for her quiet intimate portraits that captured the relatability of her subjects, some of her most endearing paintings were the portraits she did of friends Barrington Watson, Kofi Kayiga and John Maxwell.  Mrs Bloomfield –Ambrose also painted the portraits  of Prime Minister Michael Manley, University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Vice-chancellors A. Z. Preston, Sir Alister McIntyre, the Honorable Rex Nettleford and Professor E. Nigel Harris. She also created the iconic sculpture of UWI founder Sir Phillip Sherlock. [. . .]

For full obituary article, see https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/in-memoriam-valerie-bloomfield-ambrose/

[Painting above: “Portrait” by Valerie Bloomfield-Ambrose. NGJ.]

[Many thanks to Dominique Brebion (AICA) for bringing this item to our attention.] In LEXGO, Linda Blackford writes about Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson, saying, “You may not know about this UK professor, but the international art world sure does.” Patterson is associate professor of painting at the University of Kentucky School of Art and Visual Studies. Here are excerpts of Blackford’s review:

[. . .] Ebony G. Patterson has been a painting professor at UK since 2007, but these days, she has to maneuver her schedule around a busy lineup of shows and exhibitions. On Thursday, she was in Ann Arbor, speaking at her solo show at the University of Michigan. This month and next, her work will be featured at the Illinois State University in Chicago, and later this year, she will have her biggest museum show at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Her sumptuous, bejeweled tapestries and tableaux have appeared at Art Basel in Miami, shows in Atlanta, Cuba, Canada, her native Jamaica and even the 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington. The New York Times hailed her “smashing solo show,” at the city’s Museum of Arts and Design, Vogue Magazine profiled her, and the TV show “Empire,” hung some of her art in a character’s penthouse. And then, just two weeks ago, she was named a recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship Award in the visual arts, which comes with a prize of $50,000.

Patterson, in other words, is an art world superstar who happens to live and work in Lexington.

She, however, doesn’t really like that description.

“There’s something about the word superstar that seems like that person is unapproachable or unengaging,” she said in a recent interview. “I just work and I just love what I do and I’m willing to trust in whatever it is I’m doing and seeing wherever it takes me. A star today can be not so interesting tomorrow.”

Patterson, 36, concedes she’s had good timing — her work asks questions about race, gender, violence and identity at a moment when our culture is eager to examine and discuss those issues. Critics have been enthralled with her work inspired by Jamaican dancehall culture, where she explored that world’s hyper-masculinity and violence amid gender-bending sartorial fare.

“Her work is about a legacy of representing people of color, and she combines that interest with a deep, opulent visual sense, an appreciation of materials and the associations they bring,” said Stuart Horodner, director of the UK Art Museum. “Her work is speaking to a particular moment in the art world at a time when issues of race and identity are being focused on, and artists of color are getting more recognition. Her work is audacious and unforgettable, and curators, galleries and collectors have noticed.”

One of her newest shows, which opened Thursday at the University of Michigan, is titled “Of 72,” referencing the 72 men and a woman who disappeared during an armed conflict between drug cartels and police in Kingston, Jamaica in 2010. The faces are set into bandanas appliqued with flowers and jewels, then half-covered with more cloth. On the floor beneath them sits another tableau of glittery images and ghostly glass shoes. [. . .]

For full article, see http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article198113354.html

Also see https://uknow.uky.edu/arts-culture/uk-artistprofessor-ebony-g-patterson-wins-coveted-united-states-artists-fellowship

Caribbean Life News features Sophia Dawson, an artist of Jamaican heritage, who was inspired to create an exhibit about political prisoners. Her painted portraits of black political prisoners, “Correspond­ence,” are on view until February 24, 2018, at Okay Space (281 N. 7th Street between Meeker Avenue and Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York). This solo art exhibit is part of her larger “To Be Free” project. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Alexandra Simon reports:

Artist Sophia Dawson said she always had an interest in the lives of the men and women locked up fighting for civil rights, but that interest was piqued when she learned about the death of one of the prisoners that made up the Angola Three.

“I’ve always had a series like this in mind because all of these prisoners have been locked up for over 40 to 45 years and they’ve all been convicted for crimes,” she said. “When Herman Wallace died after being released for a day, that was when I started to work on this seriously.” [. . .]

The exhibit comprises 15 pieces of painted artwork, ranging in sizes, and an informative text about the subject of the work. She highlights more than a dozen prisoners of various movements in her series.

“The exhibit features and revolves around the different individuals of the Black Panthers and other liberation groups, who are still incarcerated for their involvement in those movements,” said Dawson. Artwork featuring Mutulu Shakur, the stepfather of late rapper Tupac Shakur, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, and Ed Pointdexter are in the exhibit. In her research of other political prisoners, Dawson even started communicating with several of them by writing letters. She said she wanted to use her art to revisit the cases of black political prisoner specifically and give people a chance to briefly learn about them. [. . .]

With her show, she aims to engage viewers to not only observe but to also spark an interest within them to also advocate for their release and keep up with their sentences. On the wall alongside informational text about the people in the art, there will be postcards and a petition to sign. Dawson said their support for the show needs to go beyond the imagery.

“I want to have the art as the takeaway, but also have a handful of people really learn more and support the cause, and learn how to contribute because we need numbers,” she said.

Dawson, who is of Jamaican descent, said she nor her family has any close ties to the Black Panthers, but said after learning about them, she made it her mission to learn about the movement, its martyrs, and those who were imprisoned. She wants to challenge the perception people tend to have about political prisoners and the prison system overall. And she encourages participation because she wants it to be a starting point to mobilize people into action.

“It’s important for people to have the opportunity to see them in the same light that I’ve been able to for years,” said Dawson. “I hear people say they support raising the age and that’s it — they are not connected to the people, and how can you advocate for people and be separate from them?”

For full article, see https://www.caribbeanlifenews.com/stories/2018/2/cl-political-prisoners-exhibit-williamsburg-2018-02-02-bk.html

[Photo of the artist by Sindayiganza Photography.]

The immediate past executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica, Dr. Veerle Poupeye, recently published an article on Jamaican artist Ebony G Patterson’s recent trajectory, successes, and forthcoming plans. Here are excerpts; read the full review at the Jamaica Observer. Poupeye writes:

We have only just reached March and it is already evident that 2018 is shaping up to be an amazing year for Ebony G Patterson, the Jamaican artist who has arguably put contemporary art from Jamaica on the international map. She has received three major awards since the start of the year alone: the 2017 Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant (which was announced in February 2018), as well as the prestigious United States Artists Award and the Stone & DeMcguire Contemporary Art Award.

The Tiffany Foundation Grant seeks to support outstanding artists to “produce new work and push the boundaries of their creativity” and the prestigious United States Artists Award is given to 45 artists and collectives who, in the words of that award’s President and CEO Deana Haggag, “produce some of the most moving, incisive and powerful artistic work in this country”. The Stone & DeMcguire Contemporary Art Award is given to outstanding alumni of the Sam Fox School of Art, Washington University in St Louis, where Patterson obtained her MFA in 2006. [. . .]

Meanwhile, Patterson is also preparing for a major solo exhibition, titled … while the dew is still on the roses…, at the Perez Art Museum in Miami (PAMM), along with several other solo exhibitions, at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago and the Baltimore Museum of Art, just to name two. The PAMM exhibition is curated by Deputy Director/Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander and, Patterson disclosed to me, will take the form of an immersive, mixed media installation, which expands on the idea of the garden as a site for her recent meditations on black visibility/invisibility, gender and the black body, disempowerment and self-actualisation, and violence and death —a sort of perverse Garden of Eden in reverse, in which the natural and the artificial are seamlessly mixed, and which takes inspiration, and its title, from Olive Senior’s famous poem Gardening in the Tropics. This installation will incorporate new and older work, including the Bush Cockerels multi-channel video Ebony has previously shown at the National Gallery of Jamaica, which is in my estimation one of her most outstanding works to date, and will have the exuberantly embellished visual and material qualities her work is known for. If you are in the Miami region between November 8, 2018 and August 18, 2019, make sure to visit PAMM!

And while 2018 is shaping up to be exceptional, Patterson’s achievements in recent years have been consistently outstanding. In 2014, she was the recipient of the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Aaron Matalon Award for the most outstanding work in the inaugural, 2014 Jamaica Biennial —she presented two installations at Devon House that year. In 2015, she had a solo exhibition, … when they grow up, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and another solo project, Dead Treez, was in 2016 shown at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. She was also featured in the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2016 and in the Prospect 3, in New Orleans, in 2015. In 2016, she also was commissioned to do an installation, titled … PRESENT for Barneys’ Christmas windows in New York City and, just before the close of 2017, she received the Tiffany Foundation biennial award. This, too, is just a sampling of what is a truly impressive line-up of recent accomplishments.

[. . .] Her achievements have also helped to open doors for other young and emerging artists from Jamaica and to attract the international spotlight to contemporary art in the Caribbean. So we need to recognise and celebrate her achievements and this article seeks to contribute to that.

Ebony Patterson has always insisted on her personal and artistic groundedness in Jamaica as “home” and she states that she could not imagine living and working in the USA without maintaining that vital connection. She remembers gratefully that she was helped a lot by her teachers and other art supporters while she was a young art student and artist in Jamaica and, honouring this legacy, she takes “giving back” to the local art community very seriously. She has mentored and contributed to the development of several younger artists here, for instance by sponsoring the recent artist residencies of Camille Chedda and Kelley-Ann Lindo at Alice Yard in Trinidad, and she has assisted with tuition and project funding to deserving art students. And, heeding the advice given to her by her teacher and mentor Cecil Cooper, she has continued to work and exhibit regularly in Jamaica, where she maintains her main home. [. . .]

For full article, see http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/style/ebony-g-patterson-8217-s-amazing-year_128004?profile=1240

[Photo above: Ebony G. Patterson. Courtesy of the Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.]

Also see more on the artist at https://uknow.uky.edu/arts-culture/uk-artistprofessor-ebony-g-patterson-wins-coveted-united-states-artists-fellowship

In “Two sides of Jamaica: Exhibit analyzes country’s perception,” Alexandra Simon (Caribbean Life) reviews Jacqueline Bishop’s new exhibition,“By the Rivers of Babylon,” which opened on March 30, and will continue through April 22, 2018, at the SRO Gallery in Crown Heights (1144 Dean Street between Nostrand and Rogers Avenues, Brooklyn, New York). [See previous post: Art Exhibition: Jacqueline Bishop’s “By the Rivers of Babylon.] Simon writes:

In a new art exhibit titled “By the Rivers of Babylon,” visual artist and New York University professor Jacqueline Bishop analyzes her homeland in recent times. The month long exhibit, which opens on March 30 at Sro Gallery, was inspired by the aftermath of the infamous international manhunt for gang leader Christopher “Dudus” Coke in 2010, and the decades-old tourist perception of the island nation — two extremes in which outsiders often see Jamaica, said Bishop. And in her search for family during the manhunt she discovered something unsettling.

“My first instinct was to get an idea of what was going on because I still had friends and family in Jamaica, but in trying to get through and find information online — I kept running into idyllic tourist images,” she said. “And this juxtaposition became an arising problem for me.”

From that moment on, Bishop began to examine the way Jamaica was seen through the eyes of the world, and challenge how it was seen. Working in France at the time, she felt conflicted on what it personally meant to her. And a few of her first artworks in the 36-piece exhibit highlighted those two extremes.

“I am an American citizen and a Jamaican citizen who ended up in France working for the U.S., so I felt that both parts of myself were at war over this guy,” said Bishop. “The Dudus and landscape paintings came out of that, and I started doing a body of work against those typical images because I always felt there were two sides people saw Jamaica — the tourist side and the gritty images of the inner city.”

Some of the art depicts a street vendorship, shantytowns and homes, and some written work. The artwork stands to be somewhat of a lesson for anyone who categorizes the country in one way, said Bishop. She says her art is a learning opportunity for guests to see the many aspects of Jamaica. “They can learn that Jamaica is a very complex place and it is not one thing or the other. Dudus will never define Jamaica and tourism will never define it either,” said Bishop. “And neither will Babylon or Zion define it because Jamaica is a mixture of all of these things and I hope people takeaway that Jamaica is a very complicated place, and trying to flatten it into one specific place is not feasible.”

Bishop said her mission with her artwork was also to foster and build more intra-Caribbean relationships and give light to issues yet to be heard. “If this exhibit prompts one thing, it’s the way in which we connect with other Caribbean islands and foster dialogue and build bridges,” she said. “My work is to be the voice for the voicelessness, tell untold stories, and foster bridges.”

Source: https://www.caribbeanlifenews.com/stories/2018/4/cl-jamaican-history-and-art-exhibit-2018-03-30-bk.html

For more information, call SRO Gallery at (347) 489-6189, or visit www.srogallery.com.

[Image above: Detail from Bishop’s “Dudus 3” from original; see http://srogallery.com/.]

“John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night” and “Daylight Come: Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica” are on view at the National Gallery of Jamaica in Kingston, Jamaica. Both exhibitions close on July 29, 2018.

Description: Originally exhibited at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in 2017 and considered to be one of the most exciting shows that year in the United States, “John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night” showcases a once in a lifetime compilation of the work of renowned Jamaican Intuitive artist, John Dunkley (1891-1947). Born in Savanna-la-Mar, Dunkley was of the generation of Jamaicans who traveled to Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba at the beginning of the 20thCentury seeking opportunities for work and advancement. His moody paintings and whimsical sculptures reflect his life, experiences and views on Jamaica’s fledgling nationalist movement. The National Gallery’s version of the exhibition, which opened on April 29 and closes on July 29, contains important new work not shown at PAMM.

Exploring themes of tourism, immigration and the emergence of cultural nationalism during Dunkley’s lifetime, “Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica” acts as a complement to “John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night.” The exhibition contains rare photographs, artefacts and film footage from the turn of the century leading into the Jamaican Nationalist era and provides further context to Dunkley’s creative output. It explores the work of his contemporaries: David Miller Snr and David Miller Jnr, Carl Abrahams, Albert Huie, David Pottinger, Ralph Campbell, and Henry Daley, among others. [It] shows the move from ethnographic and oftentimes disparaging depictions of Jamaicans, to the attempts at social and cultural empowerment by the aforementioned artists and others of the Jamaican Cultural Nationalist movement of the early 1900s. This exhibition, which opened on May 27, will also be on view until July 29.

For more information, see https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/last-sundays-june-24-to-ft-amina-blackwood-meeks-anomaly/

Jacqueline Bishop’s latest newsletter features a photograph of one of Sane Mae Dunkley’s colorful, hand-made mats. Dunkley passed away last December, in Bishop’s words, “right at the moment when her hand-made mats were becoming known both in and outside of Jamaica.” [See Bishop’s tribute for her—“Master Jamaican Mat-Maker Sane Mae Dunkley Wove Together the Story of the Jamaican People in Her Works”—in the Jamaica Observer.

Issue 4 also covers recent exhibitions, such as “By the Rivers of Babylon” (SRO Gallery, Brooklyn, New York) and the artist’s participation at ART OMI Sculpture Garden and Artist Residency (Ghent, New York). In this post, she highlights a piece by fellow Jamaican artist Nari Ward: G.O.A.T.

She also brings attention to SX Salon’s most recent issue, which features her paintings “Landscape 1” and “Birds 1” and her poems: “Citron” and “New World Finches” [see http://smallaxe.net/sxsalon/poetry-prose/poems-jacqueline-bishop] as well as her most recent profiles, reviews and interviews in publications such as Jamaica Observer and The Huffington Post.

See the new issue at https://jacquelineabishop.com/newsletter/.

The National Gallery of Jamaica will host a panel discussion entitled “Perspectives on Dunkley” on Saturday, July 21, 2018, at 2:00pm. The discussion will be moderated by independent Jamaican curator and writer Nicole Smythe-Johnson, who co-curated the critically acclaimed “John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night” exhibition with independent US-based curator Diana Nawi, and will feature presentations by Deborah A. Thomas and Oneika Russell. This event is free and open to the public. Attendees will have an opportunity to view the exhibitions “John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night” and “Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica,” which close on July 29. [See our previous post John Dunkley at the National Gallery of Jamaica.]

Description (NGJ): Conceptualized by Smythe-Johnson, this panel will include [her] presentation on Dunkley’s significance from an art historical context; a presentation by Deborah A. Thomas on the role of culture in Jamaica’s Nationalist movements; and [. . .] a presentation by Oneika Russell from the perspective of an artist with a particular interest in Dunkley and his influence on other artists. This panel serves as part of the programming for the exhibition John Dunkley Neither Day nor Night, as well as its complementary exhibit Daylight come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica.

The critically acclaimed exhibition John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night showcases a once in a lifetime compilation of the work of renowned Jamaican Intuitive artist, John Dunkley (1891-1947) and was originally shown at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Born in Savanna-la-Mar, Dunkley was of the generation of Jamaicans who travelled to Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba at the beginning of the 20th Century seeking opportunities for work and advancement. His moody paintings and whimsical sculptures reflect his life, experiences and views on Jamaica’s fledgling nationalist movement.

Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica acts as a complement to John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night. It explores the themes of tourism, immigration and the emergence of cultural nationalism during Dunkley’s lifetime. The exhibition contains rare photographs, artifacts and film footage from the turn of the century and shows the move from ethnographic and oftentimes disparaging depictions of Jamaicans, to the attempts at social and cultural empowerment by the Jamaican Cultural Nationalist movement of the early 1900s; providing further context to Dunkley’s creative output.

Nicole Smythe-Johnson is a writer and independent curator based in Kingston Jamaica. She studied Humanities, Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota (BA, 2007) and Postcolonial Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds (MA, 2011). She has written for Terremoto, Miami Rail, Flash Art, Jamaica Journal and several other local and international publications. In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Tilting Axis Curatorial Research Fellowship. She visited Scotland, Grenada, Barbados, Suriname and Puerto Rico, looking at curatorial practice in alternative and artist-run spaces. Currently, she is Acting Editor of Caribbean Quarterly, the University of the West Indies’ flagship journal.

Deborah A. Thomas is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is also core faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, holds a secondary appointment with the Graduate School of Education, and is a member of the graduate groups in English, Africana Studies, and the School of Social Policy and Practice.  She is the author of Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation:  Entanglement, Witnessing, Repair (forthcoming), Exceptional Violence:  Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (2011), and Modern Blackness:  Nationalism, Globalization, and The Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004).

A graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Oneika Russell completed a diploma in the Painting Department before leaving to study at Goldsmiths College in London in the Centre for Cultural Studies in 2003. While at Goldsmiths, Russell began to integrate her deep interest in combining the practice of Painting with New Media. She went on to complete the Doctoral Course in Art at Kyoto Seika University, Japan concentrating on Animation in Contemporary Art.  Russell is currently a lecturer across The Fine Art and Visual Communication Departments at The Edna Manley College.

For more information, see https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/panel-discussion-perspectives-on-dunkley/ and https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/2018/06/18/last-sundays-june-24-to-ft-amina-blackwood-meeks-anomaly/

[Image above: Dunkley’s “Banana Plantation.” Source: http://pamm.org/exhibitions/john-dunkley-neither-day-nor-night.]

[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention. In the latest issue of Vogue (16 July 2018) Rachel Hahn (“Jamaican Reggae Star Protoje on the Dying Art of Rasta Crowns”) focuses her attention on Protoje and his personal styling and tribute to Jamaican artists in the ’70s and ’80s through his choice of Rasta crowns. Here are excerpts from Vogue:

Whenever reggae star Protoje takes the stage, people beg him for one of the hats that he’s wearing, and for good reason—nobody else sports the particularly capacious Rasta crowns like he does. He’s certainly not the first to sport the storied headgear, which he’s quick to point out: “These are styles that I would see artists from the ’70s and ’80s in Jamaica wearing, legends like Dennis Brown,” the Kingston-based musician says.

But they’re hard to come by these days, and while lots of artists have no qualms with giving away something that they’re wearing onstage to an adoring fan, whether it be a T-shirt or a tank top, Protoje is understandably reluctant to part with his collection. “I’ll be onstage singing and people are like, ‘Please, please!,’ but they’re one of a kind, so I can’t just give them away. I gave one away one time. This girl in the crowd was just begging for one, and afterwards I gave my brown one away.”

The artist, whose newly released album A Matter of Time premiered at number one on the Billboard reggae charts, was always interested in the wide hats—he’s long been fascinated with the sounds and styles of ’80s Jamaica—but he only saw older men wearing them. One day he randomly approached an elder with one of the crowns on to ask where he had gotten it, and the man directed him to two men who handcraft the hats 50 meters away from each other on the side of the road in a little crevice of the busy streets of downtown Kingston. “[In the past] you probably had a lot more people making them,” Protoje says of his signature accessory. “It’s a dying art, so these two guys that are making them are probably two of the guys that were making them for those artists back in the day.”

Protoje consistently commissions these two men to make hats for him, and he’ll even request certain colors to match his onstage ensembles; in total, they’ve made him about 15 to 20 hats. Protoje’s favorite is a reddish-brown suede one, but he mostly wears his black leather one, as it matches with just about any look. The distinctions between the crowns can be subtle. His leather craftsman will, Protoje explain, “sometimes put nine different pieces of leather or different materials in them, like felt, or he’ll stitch it differently.”

The eye-catching chapeau certainly adds a polishing finishing touch to Protoje’s throwback rock-star aesthetic (he cites artists like Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles as style inspirations). “I think when I get dressed the outfit isn’t complete until I have one of these,” he says.

Protoje’s new album is an attempt to move the genre forward—he bemoans the fact that people want reggae to sound as it did at Bob Marley’s peak—but he acknowledges these forbearers that have given him a foundation to experiment with: “The root of my music is always going to be from Jamaican artists in the ’70s. I have the utmost respect for that generation and what they did because otherwise I could never be doing what I’m doing now.” And in a similar manner, his signature accessory is a way to shine light on the style of this era. “It’s just carrying on in that tradition and keeping some things indigenous to Jamaica and exposing it,” he says. “There’s nobody more stylish than Jamaican artists in the ’70s and ’80s.” [. . .]

For full article, see https://www.vogue.com/article/protoje-reggae-kingston-jamaica-rasta-crowns-hat-a-matter-of-time-new-album

Congratulations to Jamaican artists Katrina Coombs and Oneika Russell, and Haitian curator/art critic Giscard Bouchotte on their Fall 2018 Davidoff Art Initiative (DAI) residencies. Coombs and will be at Russell FLORA ars+natura (Bogotá, Colombia) and Residency Unlimited (Brooklyn, New York), respectively. Bouchotte was chosed for Atelier Mondial / Institut Kunst FHNW (Basel, Switzerland). Here are descriptions from Art & Education:

A seasoned textile and fiber artist, Katrina Coombs (b. 1986, Jamaica) explores the impact and intrusion of the “Other” on the Self, specifically what women face while navigating social constraints and personal expectation, both physical and psychological. A two-time participant in the Jamaica Biennial (in 2014 and 2017), Coombs has exhibited in notable shows throughout Jamaica as well as in the 2016 London Biennale Pollination art project, Synchronisation Syncopation, in the Philippines. For her residency at FLORA arts+natura, Coombs intends to create a body of work interrogating notions of belonging and nesting interests.

Oneika Russell (b. 1980, Jamaica) depicts “Paradise”—in all its complicated history and uncomfortable beauty—via an interdisciplinary practice that includes handwork, digital manipulation, and animation. She created Antilles for the Antilleans: Saltwater, a major, nine-panel textile work, for the 2018 DAK’ART Biennale, navigating Caribbean people’s fraught relationship with the sea and their historic connection with Africa. Her goals for Residency Unlimited include expanding her textile practice, noting New York’s deep-rooted garment and textile industry, while centering the series in how exotic places and people are an expression of Western desire.

An independent curator and critic, Giscard Bouchotte (b. 1977, Haiti) champions his homeland Haiti via social practice around the world. Notably, he curated Haiti’s first Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, with the exhibition Kingdom of This World. Bouchotte’s recent activities include Périféériques, a traveling project exploring new artistic and social practices in peri-urban spaces (Haiti, plus Senegal and Benin), and Nuits blanches (Port-au-Prince), which engages artists in urban initiatives. His goals in his residency at Atelier Mondial / Institut Kunst FHNW will take a similar collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, advancing his research into localized visual and noise “pollution” and the bridge between cacophony and new sounds.

“We are proud to support an independent curator from the Caribbean in this next sequence of residencies abroad,” comments Albertine Kopp, Davidoff Art Initiative. “While our residency program at Altos de Chavón in the Dominican Republic has welcomed several excellent curators from across the globe, it is essential that we promote this caliber of art world professionalism from the region as well. Giscard’s project for Haiti’s first National Pavilion in Venice, coupled with his numerous activities in Port-au-Prince and internationally, supports this decision. The two artists for the Fall 2018 season, Oneika and Katrina, both come from the same generation and homeland, however each centers her ‘Self’ in a way that will surely resonate with the communities of their respective programs. We are delighted for this trio of talented individuals.”

About the Davidoff Art Initiative
The Davidoff Art Initiative supports contemporary art and artists in the Caribbean, strengthens art organizations in the Dominican Republic, shares knowledge and expertise about contemporary art, and fosters cultural engagement between the Caribbean and the rest of the world. At the core of the Art Initiative, Davidoff aims to engage closely with the arts and culture of the Dominican Republic, where much of its production and many of its employees are based, bringing opportunity and visibility to the art and culture of the Caribbean region, and extending the company’s long-standing commitment to artistry, craftsmanship, community, and quality. The Davidoff Art Initiative’s four global program areas are Art Residency, Art Dialogues, Art Grants, and Art Editions.

[Above: Katrina Coombs’s “Void,” 2015.]

Source: https://www.artandeducation.net/announcements/206771/fall-2018-residents-for-bogot-brooklyn-and-basel

A new exhibition by Jamaica artist Ebony G. Patterson will open on November 9, 2018, and will be on view until May 5, 2019, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM): “Ebony G. Patterson . . . while the dew is still on the roses.”

Description: Ebony G. Patterson . . . while the dew is still on the roses . . . presents the work of Kingston-born artist Ebony G. Patterson (b. 1981). The most significant presentation of the artist’s work to date, the project includes examples of the artist’s work produced over the last five years, embedded within a new installation environment that references a night garden. Known for her drawings, tapestries, videos, sculptures and installations that involve surfaces layered with flowers, glitter, lace and beads, Patterson’s works investigate forms of embellishment as they relate to youth culture within disenfranchised communities. Her neo-baroque works address violence, masculinity, “bling,” visibility and invisibility within the post-colonial context of her native Jamaica and within black youth culture globally. This exhibition focuses on the role that gardens have played in her practice, referenced as spaces of both beauty and burial; environments filled with fleeting aesthetics and mourning.

[Image above: Ebony Patterson. “Dead Tree in a Forest,” 2013. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago. Collection of Monique Meloche and Evan Boris, Chicago, Illinois.]

For more information, see https://www.pamm.org/exhibitions/ebony-g-patterson-while-dew-still-roses