[Many thanks to Veerle Poupeye for bringing this item to our attention.] In “Artist Ebony G. Patterson’s Lush and Provocative Garden Installation in North Carolina Is a Delight for the Eyes—See It Here,” Caroline Goldstein (ArtNet News) writes, “While museums are closed to the public, we are spotlighting an inspiring exhibition somewhere around the globe each day.” Here, she features “Ebony G. Patterson: … while the dew is still on the roses… ,” on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina.
What the museum says: Jamaican-born artist Ebony G. Patterson’s “neo-baroque” works “address violence, masculinity, ‘bling,’ visibility, and invisibility within the post-colonial context of her native Kingston 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.”
Why it’s worth a look: A lush floral landscape takes over the galleries, with tendrils and vines, papered over in deep purple wallpaper, snaking across the walls. In the center of the gallery, huge red and orange blossoms hold court, surrounded by Patterson’s textile and mixed-media assemblages.
Patterson doesn’t skimp on glitz and sparkles, which are used to transcend gender boundaries. A pair of heels with intricately carved wooden platforms lay on a bed of colorfully beaded petals. And nearby, a pair of metallic blue lace-up combat boots are festooned with epaulette tassels.
The artist has spoken about using color and pattern as a way to assert dignity—especially through dress and in performance. In a video titled … three kings weep… , three black men sit ramrod straight against a Fragonard-esque backdrop of butterflies and climbing roses. The men are clad in mixed patterns of African wax prints and other vibrant textures. In the video, they slowly undress themselves, peeling off layers as tears stream down their faces. [. . .]
[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Jacqueline Bishop (Bookends, Jamaica Observer) interviews artist Alicia Brown in recognition of Women’s History Month. This is the fourth in a series of conversations (#InConVerSation) in the Bookends column between writer Jacqueline Bishop and Jamaican women writers and artists. Here are three segments from this excellent interview:
Alicia Brown, I am so happy to conduct this interview with you since I have so long admired your work. Let’s start with something seemingly self-evident: That the painted figure is always your main point of entry. What about it do you find so engaging?
That means a lot. I am likewise honoured to be interviewed by you, Jacqueline. The figure has always interested me, maybe because I grew up looking at this form of art in magazines and later in art books. I was drawn to the skilful emulation of reality by someone who was able to create three-dimensional objects on a flat surface that ended up looking so real. I loved how through realistic representation I was able to get a glimpse of a world outside of the one I existed in. As a child I would copy the cartoons from the newspaper to get an exact likeness of the characters. I am intrigued by the complexity of human physiognomy — the flesh, bones, personality. There is something about the figure that allows contact with my vulnerability and allows for a connection with my soul, and I am elated when I can capture the feeling of being alive. I am fascinated by the representation and the role of the figure throughout art history. The figure is imbued with feelings shared by living beings, the figure is central in my works, not just as representation but to interact and connect with the model and the viewer. In a sense, what I am doing in my work is providing the viewer with the ability to engage temporarily in someone else’s intimate world.
[. . .] The people in your paintings are at once familiar as Jamaican “types” who are often placed in politically charged landscapes. Firstly, can you tell us how you find your models? What do the models make of themselves in your paintings? Also, why do you seem especially intent on painting young girls and women, and why is so much attention given to the area of the neck in your portraits which are always elaborately adorned?
The first paintings I made were of women I met on the streets of downtown Kingston in the street salons; some were hairdressers, vendors or just onlookers. What drew my attention to these women was how they commanded attention by the way they were dressed with an attitude of pride and power. They were adorned in pearl jewellery, bright coloured wigs, and clothing that appears to be expensive, but they were sitting on buckets on the streets. I found all of these juxtapositions compelling and fascinating.
Indeed, the individuals I choose to paint are people I feel a strong connection to who compel me to want to know more about them and who, I think, would fit a certain idea I have for a piece. The models in my paintings for the most part always express a certain pride at being painted, some of them express that I make them look beautiful, or that they look like royalty. I can only recall one instance where a model was not happy with the way she was depicted in a painting I made of her, but it was okay to get that reaction, and she was honest. In addition to the people I meet on the street, my models are drawn from family members, friends, or people in my neighbourhood, and I go for a certain body type and face.
I guess I focus on painting young women because they have a certain awkwardness and obsession with their appearance and I think they are more accepting of western trends, specifically mass culture. I am from a large family of sisters and I think growing up in a household of women, I somehow react to females more strongly and feel obliged to make paintings that represent them as resilient, defiant, survivors, keepers of culture, but at times people who are also very vulnerable.
In addition, and as I noted earlier, some of my favourite paintings are 16th- and 17th-century European portraits depicting royalty adorned with white ruff lace collars around the necks framing the faces. In most of those painting compositions, the figure is against a dark background, which creates a strong contrast with the model and the collar. This allows the white lace collar to be the focus. At first glance when you look at these paintings it seems as if the figure is being beheaded, and even though the collars look beautiful and delicate I always wonder how uncomfortable and restricting this object of adornment must have been to the wearer. Borrowing the idea of the ruff collar from the Elizabethan period of European history as well as from the tradition of African beaded collars that were worn as symbols of wealth, I often contrast this idea of the collar as a symbol of wealth with that of the collar as an object of forced control of enslaved Africans. I see the neck as the foundation that supports the head and the lower body and historically the neck has always been an interesting feature of the body that humans still have an obsession to adorn. Consequently, in my paintings I place focus on the figure by adorning their necks with objects that are a metaphor of desire and power but also of dependency.
[. . .] One of the things you have said is that the Caribbean has always been a place that attracts outsiders, a place to be conquered. What evidence can you offer in support of this assertion and how might this be demonstrated in the images and stories you engage with as a painter?
The history of the Caribbean is such that it was colonised by territories such as Britain, France, and Spain who were attracted to the region because of the richness in resources that these European countries plundered and utilised to build their empires. Outside of that history, presently the Caribbean region is one of the leading destinations for tourists and business investors worldwide. Even though the Caribbean has claimed independence we currently depend heavily on resources from outside the region, which include basic amenities such as food, clothing, medicine, and infrastructure for survival. Most of the businesses, for instance, in Jamaica are owned by foreign companies. This impacts our culture where a lot of attention is given to western trends and we tend to rely upon and adapt so much from outsiders that what it means to be an independent Jamaican nation is cloudy.
I aim to create stories and dialogues on Western power structures and the ongoing fight of the Caribbean region to maintain independence. In my works, I try to present the idea of dependency by integrating contemporary portraits of people placed in spaces that are from a specific era or culture such as America, various European countries, and China. By doing so, the use of objects associated with the regions that have conquered the Caribbean serve as markers of time and place and by juxtaposing the objects with contemporary women from the region I am seeking to highlight the ongoing influence of the conquerors on today’s Caribbean cultural identity. [. . .]
Emma Lewis (Petchary’s Blog) reviews Judy Ann MacMillan’s Born Ya: The Life and Loves of a Jamaican Painter (2019). The book has been called “a love letter to Jamaica,” and Lewis’s review teases out this loving perspective. Here are excerpts; read full review, including photographs, and a selection of MacMillan’s artwork at Petchary’s Blog.
“But I man on ya, I man born ya/I nah leave ya fi go America/No way say, pot a boil ya, a belly full ya/Sweet Jamaica”
This song was recorded in the turbulent mid-1970s by a rather jolly and amusing reggae singer named Pluto Shervington. It is a somewhat patriotic song, almost defiant in a gentle way. At the time, Jamaicans were, in fact, leaving in droves. Mr. Shervington himself did “leave ya” a year after recording the song. Politics is ruthless.
There is an echo of this same kind of defensiveness in the autobiography of this Jamaican painter, “Born Ya” (which means “Born Here”). She seems to be saying: “Yes, this is where I was born. Why shouldn’t I stay here? Why shouldn’t I love this place?” An earlier book, “My Jamaica: The Paintings of Judy Ann MacMillan,” published in 2004 and launched at Devon House in Kingston, allows her love for her country express itself in her art. In the year 2000, she had also collaborated happily on a publication entitled “Albert Huie: The Father of Jamaican Painting.” Huie was her great mentor, a positive influence on her work and quite a kindred spirit.
I found “Born Ya” an “easy read” in terms of language and presentation – but not a “light read.” The way time passes; the complexities of the artistic life; Jamaica’s puzzling and contradictory social mores; regrets (acknowledged) and faults (sometimes unacknowledged); family, and one’s often incomplete relationships with one’s parents; love, sexual attraction, laughter and loneliness. All of these are woven into the book, which is subtitled “The Life and Loves of a Jamaican Painter.” It’s a fascinating read, and there is a lot to think about. [. . .]
The book opens with a description of the early morning light bursting in – light, that essential element that inspires the artist, in her beloved house, Rockfield, in St. Ann. It has “one of the most ethereal views in Jamaica.” After her initial euphoria on waking up, the process then takes over. The artist later clarifies how actually being in the painting is important to her, rather than painting from a photograph or in a studio. So, she must be herself sitting in the landscape. Painting, she says, “can make you crazy” – an intense, challenging, sometimes frustrating process that pulls you inside out but, in the end, brings some kind of catharsis. A lot of creative processes are like this, perhaps. [. . .]
Alina Cohen (Artsy) writes about Jamaican-born artist, curator, and collector Kristina Newman-Scott. For full article and photos of works in her fine collection, read more atArtsy.[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.]
Over the past 20 years, Kristina Newman-Scott has championed diversity and social justice in the arts. As a curator, director of culture for the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and now president of BRIC in Brooklyn, she’s long been committed to equity and representation in both the exhibitions she mounts and in the organizations she runs. “As a Black leader, somebody who has the privilege of leading an institution like BRIC, if I can’t invest in Black artists, what am I doing?” she said in a recent interview. “I won’t ever stop.”
Newman-Scott’s engagement with the arts began when she was a young artist in Kingston, Jamaica, where she was born and raised. She translated her ideas about power dynamics in the Caribbean—particularly around prejudices based on race and gender—into geometric paintings. She attended Kingston’s Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, and after graduating in 2000, she moved to the United States in 2005 to continue her career.
Away from her hometown, Newman-Scott’s interests shifted towards linguistic barriers. In a series of text-based works, she called attention to different pronunciations of English words, asking viewers to stand in her shoes as she adapted to new accents. These principles, and her origins as an artist, pervade Newman-Scott’s career as a leader in the arts, as well as her personal art collection. In her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, she lives amid some 300 works, many of which were made by artists who are friends and collaborators she’s supported over the years.
The first artworks Newman-Scott ever acquired were trades with her art school friends. “As we made, we exchanged,” she said. “I started to buy art from some of my colleagues. It was so fluid.” After graduating, she established a sponge painting and muraling business with her friend Kahlil Dean. They traded work—and inspiration.
After Newman-Scott moved to the U.S. in 2005 and began working at Real Art Ways, a nonprofit in Hartford, Connecticut, she continued purchasing directly from artists she admired. Her first stateside buy, she remembered, was a photograph of an Oreo cookie in the shape of a yin-yang symbol by Kevin Van Aelst, an artist who’d participated in a Real Art Ways exhibition. Newman-Scott estimates that she owns work from 65 percent of the artists with whom she’s worked; collecting is one more way that she can build relationships with artists and show that she believes in their work. Owning their art offers “a memory of the experience we had together and the challenging questions they were trying to answer in their work,” she said.
In 2008, Newman-Scott curated a chandelier by Simone Leigh into an exhibition titled “Archaeology of Wonder” at Real Art Ways. The work resembled a group of dark, gold-nippled ceramic breasts spiked with dozens of antennas. Newman-Scott owns two of the small ceramic breasts from Leigh’s chandeliers, some of her favorite works in her collection. She has also purchased a print by Afrofuturist artist Saya Woolfalk and a work by Olu Oguibe, the latter of whom co-curated the African pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2001.
While Newman-Scott owns artworks from artists across the Americas (including pieces by Sofia Maldonado and Margarida Correia), her loyalty to the Caribbean and support for Black artists is clear. In her bedroom, for example, there’s a painting by Jamaican artist Milton George. “It’s really important for me to invest in my culture and in people from my community,” she said. “There’s still such a small percentage of artists of color in museums and institutions and in major galleries.”
Ebony G. Patterson, who attended Edna Manley College with Newman-Scott, is also represented in the collection with a print. “We knew Ebony was going to be a star from art college days, when we were all in Kingston,” said Newman-Scott. In 2008, she and Yona Backer curated Patterson into “Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art.” “I should have bought so much more from Ebony,” said Newman-Scott. In recent years, the artist’s career has exploded as she’s enjoyed solo presentations at the Museum of Arts and Design and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Last year, Newman-Scott purchased a print by the phenom Derrick Adams, which features a swim-suited figure reclining with a tropical drink. “I will wear cheap shoes all day,” she said. “If you tell me a piece of art costs $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, it doesn’t matter. If I’m connecting with it, I have to have it.”
This kind of passion and determination has infiltrated Newman-Scott’s human-centered work—as director of culture for the State of Connecticut, where she worked from 2015 to 2018 and emphasized diversity, and now at BRIC, where she started in August 2018. “We have affinity groups, we have a racial equity steering committee, we are creating an anti-racist institution,” she said. [. . .]
[Many thanks to Veerle Poupeye for bringing this item to our attention via Critical.Caribbean.Art.] Sugarcane Magazine features Jamaican-born artist Renee Cox and the “Black narratives” of her portraiture. Here are excerpts:
Renee Cox isn’t about the bullshit: she is sharp and unapologetic about the subjects she channels. Cox uses her body as a conduit: a small axe chopping at the brittle branches of false and exclusionary histories. For the last 30 years, the prolific photographer has posed for more than a thousand portraits and exhibited hundreds of images within series that have come to define late 20th century portraiture.
In all iterations, Cox’ work champions Black narratives; the known and unknowable chronicles of Black presence in America and the Caribbean. Her portraits have no limitations: Black people are gods, superheroes, Maroon freedom fighters and sacred Madonnas.
Even Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are evolved by her reimagining of their likenesses in Liberation of Aunt Jemima & Uncle B (1998) as superbly Black superhumans who are adorned in the unforgettable patina of Black liberation. This gesture, an unabashed declaration that Black bodies exist in the past and will exist in the future, is a powerful strategy, a mindful apparatus through which our collective imaginations can be recalibrated to dismantle and eradicate the fragile constructs of overwhelmingly flat and historically racist propaganda about Black lives.
“There is a permanence to photography,” Cox shared during a brief Zoom interview. “a longevity…. And sometimes I like to think of it as creating my own propaganda. It’s an immediate vehicle.”
Humans are hungry for legacy. World histories have proven time and time again that to be Black is to have a precarious life expectancy; white supremacy is a longstanding pandemic that refuses to be acknowledged as such. History is marked by the slaughter of Black lives, innocents and rebels whose mundane lives or rally cries for civil rights resulted in execution.
What was Breonna Taylor’s crime? What was it about her resting body, weary from serving as an essential worker during a pandemic, that warranted her assassins to consider her, and her family, a threat? She died like Chairman Fred Hampton: no knock, bullet riddled, while asleep in her bed. And like him, those who murdered her remain free. Black life is only variably recognized as human. Histories of photography provide an important lens into the fodder that feeds pathological fears about Black presence and hopeful possibilities about its usefulness in decolonizing our collective imaginaries.
Since the advent of modern photography in the early 19th century and well into the contemporary moment, non-white bodies have been the peculiar fetish of the white gaze. As anthropological inquiry or pseudo-scientific eugenic proofs, the photography and surveillance of Black bodies has served to found inimical categorizations and biases that posit Black lives as gross deviations from whiteness. [. . .]
Whether Cox is conjuring Raje, the long lost sister of Wonder Woman in Chillen With Liberty (1998) and Lost in Space (1998), embodying Queen Nanny, an 18th century revolutionary Jamaican Maroon leader in Warrior (2004) and Mother of Us All (2004), or revisioning the signing of the declaration of independence with an all-Black delegation in The Signing (2017), she consistently dismantles and challenges longstanding presumptions about how Black bodies, and Black women, should be positioned in history.
The burden of respectability that has been placed on people of color and femme-identified bodies is cast off. Her work situates and celebrates real and imagined women and elevates them with affirming and empowering portrayals.
“It’s about creating and controlling our imagery, and then mak[ing] it clear.” Cox continued, “I’m too old to be running around protesting with signs, but I definitely want to have the conversation, the discourse, in order to try to make a change… the imagery, it plays a big role.” [. . .]
Katie White (ARTnet) interviews Jamaican-born, New York-based artist Nari Ward. The artist will be show his work in a retrospective exhibition at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca in early 2024.
In a converted firehouse in Harlem, the artist Nari Ward experiments with shoestrings and scrap metal. The Jamaican-born, New York-based artist’s studio space is, in a way, a metaphor for his wide-ranging practice that uses a variety of materials—it is an oeuvre of repurposing, reimagining, and reawakening. He collects materials around his neighborhood—shopping carts, strollers, and old television sets—and works them into evocative artworks, often working at an ambitious scale, that ask challenging questions about our social and political realities.
Now, thirty years into his career, Ward, who is represented by Lehmann Maupin, is continuing this transformation process, creating art from humble objects: in March of 2024, the artist will debut a retrospective exhibition at Milan’s famed Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, the former location of the Pirelli tire factory, which was converted into formidable exhibition galleries in 2012.
Curated by Roberta Tenconi with Lucia Aspesi, the exhibition will focus on Ward’s performance and collaborative projects, including video, sound, and performative installations. The show will include acclaimed set installations the artist made as part of a dance-theater trilogy by choreographer Ralph Lemon, first presented at the Walker Art Center in 1997. Combining new and historic works, the exhibition promises to be nuanced look into Ward’s storied practice. Recently, we caught up with Ward to find out what his studio practice has been like lately.
What made you choose your particular studio over others?
I found it in the ’90s when I was looking for a space to show my installation work for an exhibition I was working on for The Studio Museum called Amazing Grace. Initially I was looking for a church, but I couldn’t find any abandoned churches. Somebody told me about this old firehouse, and I was able to get in touch with the owner. They happened to be art collectors, and they were amicable to the proposition of me using the space. [. . .]
What is the first thing you do when you walk into your studio?
I generally turn on the lights and walk back out. I don’t think about it as work in the sense that I have to clock in and out. If I don’t need to be there to complete or produce something specific, then I will go out and walk around the neighborhood or go to a place where I can watch people. I think one of my biggest hobbies is people-watching. I find inspiration from watching individuals and groups and thinking about what they’re engaged with—what they’re imagining, planning, and thinking about. My preoccupation beyond the studio is to be an observer of the rhythm and flow of people around the neighborhood. [. . .]
How does your studio environment influence the way you work?
I go through some phases where things get layered and chaotic. Things get messy, disorganized, and out of place. And I’m okay with that.
When a project is nearly complete, I don’t like messiness. I like it to be ordered and neat. So it kind of goes back and forth. I need to have things sane. And then when I get into the creative zone, I don’t mind things falling apart around me.
Transart Institute announced a solo exhibition by Jamaican artist Katrina Coombs, “Just Breathe,” which opened on December 3, 2023, at CreativSpace (located at Laws Street and Mark Lane, Downtown Kingston, Jamaica.)
Come and engage with these felted creations taking you on a psychoanalytic journey through the visual engagement of memory, hysteria, projections and rest.
Katrina Coombs was born in St Andrew, Jamaica. She holds a BFA with Honours in Textiles and Fibre Arts (2008) and a Certificate in Curatorial Studies (2009) from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. In 2013, she obtained an MFA in Creative Practice from Transart Institute via The University of Plymouth. Coombs has a passion for fibre and an understanding of the sensitivity of threads and fabric, which she uses to bring forth unique designs and sculptural forms.
Her practice focuses on the impact of the Other on the “I”, and the role and existence of the woman. She weaves and stitches fibres and textiles as ways of engaging the ambivalent and stigmatizing ways society engages the female persona. Coombs’ work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions in Kingston, Manila, Berlin, New York, Bogota, Miami, Chicago, and Washington. She lives and works in St. Andrew, Jamaica.
Last year, we missed Cornelius Tulloch’s solo exhibition “Vendah,” which took place at the CUE Art Foundation from September 7 to October 21, 2023. Here we share excerpts from an inspired interview of the artist by Kalila Ain (mentored by Dr. Joan Morgan), produced in conjunction with mentorship from Danny Báez. The full text is included in the free exhibition catalogue available at CUE and online.
Cornelius Tulloch’s Vendah (vendor) brilliantly asks us to reconsider how we identify Antillanité (Caribbean-ness), Créolité (Creole-ness), and Blackness throughout the Caribbean, Africa, and the Americas. Tulloch’s travels to specific sites led him to a definition of connected Caribbean identity. Through installation, architecture, printmaking, and painting, he transports us to moments and places that expand his perspective. The vendahs of the marketplace, though visible, are porous and evade our gaze. Works such as “Those that do not smile will kill me,” with its warning of the concentrated poison in unripe ackee, and “Plantain Prayer,” which pays reverence to an iconic fruit of the islands, remind us that food is a bridge between lands, languages, and lived experiences. Whether we say plantain (Jamaica), plátano (Cuba), or plantayne (Uganda), Vendah softens our oppositions, and recognizes magnificence in transformation.
–Kalila Ain
Kalila Ain: Upon entering the gallery, your work brought me immediately to water. I thought about weathered boats, eroded materials, cutting boards, inventiveness, and resilience. Typically, when water is incorporated as it relates to the diaspora, it’s a metaphor for breaking. With mention of Édouard Glissant in the press release, I wouldn’t say that’s your intention here. How are you using water to convey Caribbean identity in this body of work?
Cornelius Tulloch: As I was traveling the Caribbean, I visited Jamaica, Miami, Colombia, and Suriname, and I collected all these images of water. There was this theme of color, with aquas and blues building up in my process – this same color palette apparent in the tarps at the marketplace in Jamaica. In 2022, when I showed work in an exhibition called Culture Caribana, an artist named Lauren Baccus shared a quote that introduced me to the concept of the Caribbean as one unified landscape rather than an archipelago.
There came this layeredness when I started to think about the Caribbean as a continuous landscape connected under the water rather than separated. I have always seen very blue water as a signifier of what the Caribbean is, so I used that as a tool when establishing a visual language people could identify with, and it became a motif throughout the exhibition. Recognizing water as the connector of these spaces, and allowing us movement from location to location, has generated an expansion of what Caribbean identity looks like, sounds like, tastes like.
When I was introduced to Glissant years ago, I began to consider Créolité more expansively, and investigate new ideas of Caribbean-ness, particularly between Caribbean traditions and new landscapes. Growing up in both Jamaica and Miami, I always noticed an exchange of pallets, materials, and walls. I saw hand-painted signs in Jamaica that were also in certain Caribbean neighborhoods in Miami, but not in other American cities. While visiting Cartagena and Santa Marta, I thought: this feels very much like Jamaica. We’re all cousins, we’re all connected. We have our differences where cultures split, and there’s beauty in the nuances of each region as our cultures shift and adapt. I’ve blurred the boundaries of these different locations, collaging them. Allowing for a sense of material weatherednes is one of my approaches to understanding memory.
KA: The connectedness you describe under the water is truly apparent throughout the portals you’ve created in the exhibition. The oculi in Catch and Produce Patwah, the fragmented iron gate in Marina and Dougie’s Wholesale, and of course the curtains of Verandah Views. The open curtains invite our gaze to observe a marketplace that could be Jamaica, Haiti, or Ghana. What were you thinking about while constructing these entryways?
CT: I have been exploring what I would describe as ephemeral architecture: windows, doors, portals to the outside world and, particularly, the verandah of houses, which is the space between public and private. I’m working through the idea of architectural memory through materiality, and how it connects us culturally. It can give sensations and feelings about what these spaces are to us and what makes them Caribbean or not Caribbean.
Verandah Views is an image of Charles Gordon Market in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Rather than creating a perfected image, I’m sharing notes and hints. I want people to be intrigued by the feeling and aspects of the image rather than focusing on individuals.
I always ask myself: how do we break the frame? Photographs capture moments, but what’s coming next? Scale makes a big difference, and adding this portal into the gallery space allowed me to invite people into a scene while leaving room for them to wonder what’s happening outside this exact moment. Where exactly is this? As I’m describing these complexities of what the Caribbean is, I’m also considering what these places look like outside of the Caribbean. Whether in West Africa or Miami, there are certain spaces that still feel like or remind you of home. [. . .]
KA: You touched on it briefly in terms of the series Fruits of Our Mother’s Labor, but do you recall the first thoughts that led to the creation of the body of work presented in Vendah?
CT: I initially wanted to have a conversation about Caribbean markets through Miami and Jamaica. The funny thing is that there’s a specific Jamaican curry brand that is manufactured in Miami but exported to be sold in Jamaica. So, I began to look at the exchange between these two spaces through markets and food production; although separated, they’re connected. It wasn’t until I came across these motifs of water from going to Cartagena that I actively put it all together. Visiting a Maroon village in the Amazon and seeing their culture intact because of geographic separation was the first time I experienced the Caribbean outside of my own version and lens of Jamaica. As my own understanding expanded, I was able to explore more of what I wanted the show to encapsulate. [. . .]
[Shown above, photo by David Michael Cortes: “Catch,” 2023. Second photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy Locust Projects and Warhol Foundation: An installation view of Cornelius Tulloch’s “Poetics of Place” (2023) at Locust Projects.]
The National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) commemorates fifty years of preserving and promoting Jamaican art and culture. Under the theme Continuity: A Legacy of Artistry, the NGJ recently announced the launch of “Continuity: The Exhibition,” to take place on Sunday, June 30, 2024, at 1:30pm, at 12 Ocean Boulevard, Kingston, Jamaica.
The opening ceremony will commence at 1:30 PM, featuring an address by esteemed guest speaker Dr. Shani Roper, curator of the UWI Museum and co-President of the Museums Association of the Caribbean. The event will also include a reception with musical performances by acclaimed cellist Emily Ruth, guitarist Wayne McGregor, flautist Zoe McIntyre, and percussionist Rueben Betty. The gallery will be open from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and admission is free. The exhibition will run until September 30, 2024.
Description: Building upon the foundation laid by the 2014 anniversary exhibition, “In Retrospect: 40 Years of the National Gallery,” this new showcase will highlight the significant developments and exhibitions from 2014 to the present. Continuity will revisit ten of the NGJ’s most iconic exhibitions from the last decade, including the Biennials of 2014, 2017, and 2022, as well as Jamaica Jamaica! (2020). Additionally, it will feature exhibitions from National Gallery West, established in 2014 in Montego Bay to extend the NGJ’s reach to Western Jamaica. These exhibitions have explored themes such as gender, the intersection of Jamaican art and music, fashion, and technology, presented through diverse mediums including portraiture, sculpture, textiles, and multimedia.
Chief Curator Mr. O’Neil Lawrence commented on the exhibition’s selections, stating, “These exhibitions have showcased our commitment to innovation and our ability to engage the public with fresh perspectives on Jamaican art. We are excited to display new works from artists who have grown with us, reflecting the dynamic evolution of the artistic community.”
The exhibition will feature over forty artists, blending masterpieces from the permanent collection with contemporary works by previously exhibited artists. They include Barrington Watson, Albert Huie, Cosmo Whyte, Everald Brown, Petrona Morrison, Miriam Smith, Deborah Anzinger, Keambiroiro Khalfani Ra, Kimani Beckford, Ebony G. Patterson and Richard Nattoo, among others.
The opening ceremony will commence at 1:30 PM, featuring an address by esteemed guest speaker Dr. Shani Roper, curator of the UWI Museum and co-President of the Museums Association of the Caribbean. The event will also include a reception with musical performances by acclaimed cellist Emily Ruth, guitarist Wayne McGregor, flautist Zoe McIntyre, and percussionist Rueben Betty. The gallery will be open from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and admission is free. [. . .]
