New Publication – Art in the Caribbean: An Introduction

Anne Walmsley and Stanley Greaves
ART IN THE CARIBBEAN: AN INTRODUCTION
New Beacon Books, London, 2010

The Caribbean’s defining characteristic of fragmentation – geographical and historical – continues to obstruct cultural understanding and exchanges within the region. A forum such as the Caribbean Artists Movement was possible amongst writers and artists only while resident in Britain. Caribbean literature travels more easily than art, if dependent on translation. With no such language barriers Caribbean art, in reproduction at least, is potentially accessible region-wide. The internet ‘revolution’, especially, now enables wide access to reproduction of artworks and information about art and artists. Yet opportunities for a broad sense of the region’s art inheritance and details of contemporary practice are minimal. Our book aims to provide such opportunities, for students and for all with an interest in the region’s art.

ART IN THE CARIBBEAN: AN INTRODUCTION is centred on a virtual Gallery, a selection of forty artworks made in the region since the 1940s, reproduced full-page with accompanying text. Here, for example, are works which reflect both the deep-rooted cultural traditions of Haiti’s black majority (a painting based on vodoun practices, an oil-drum cut-out sculpture of a carnival figure) and another in which its contemporary artists’ embrace of international media is evident (an installation of television monitors showing street scenes and newspaper reports). Here, too, is a painting which reflects the Afro-Cuban cultural inheritance of Wifredo Lam, foremost Caribbean artist, made in Cuba after his enforced return home during WW2; a poster from the early days of the Cuban Revolution; an installation of small, flimsy boats from the 1990s. A sculptural work from Suriname incorporates Maroon art traditions of the Ndjuka; an installation from Martinique suggests the island’s continuing colonial, sugar-based status. Works from Anglophone countries – the majority, given the book’s main Caribbean readership – span cultures of the Maya and Garifuna (Black Carib) of Belize and the East Indians and Lokono (Arawak) Amerindians of Guyana, by way of portrait sculpture in Barbados, the festival arts of Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, and much more.

Artworks in the Gallery are further contextualised in the book’s other main section, Historical Background. This serves as an outline of art-making in all parts of the Caribbean region, in all periods: Pre-Columbian, Colonial and Early Independence, divided into areas colonized by the Spanish, French, British and Dutch; Modern and Contemporary, divided by country or group of countries. This part, too, is fully illustrated, with smaller images. A Time Line sets out the main historical events and art developments, again by period and area. A Glossary of Art Terms, a Select Bibliography and a listing of Illustrations complete the book.

The Authors
Anne Walmsley is a British-born researcher and writer, specializing in Caribbean arts, with experience of secondary school teaching and educational publishing in the region.

Stanley Greaves is a Guyanese-born artist and art teacher whose art educational posts have ranged from secondary school to art college and university, in Guyana and Barbados.



Book specifications

Publication 15 October 2010

192 pp, 21 x 21 cm, colour images throughout

ISBN 9781873201220

price £20.00

Individual and trade orders to:
New Beacon Books
76 Stroud Green Road, London N4 3EN, UK
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7272 4889 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7281 4662
Email: newbeaconbooks@btconnect.com
Website: www.newbeaconbooks.co.uk

Rest in Peace: Virginia Pérez-Ratton (1950-2010)

The Idol: Virginia Perez Ratton, photo from Perfil magazine.

Virginia Pérez-Ratton, senior scholar and curator of the visual arts in Central America, passed away on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at the age of 60. Virginia Pérez-Ratton devoted the majority of her life to the development and support of the visual arts and artists of the Central American region. In the mid-nineties, she organized a series of unique exhibitions on Central American art as director of San José’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design. Since then, she had become a consistent and driving force behind many initiatives. She was the founder and director of TEOR/éTica, an independent non-profit in San José dedicated to the research and diffusion of contemporary artistic practice throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and internationally. She was also known for having organized a number of international exhibitions, workshops, conferences and for producing a series of excellent publications. Her professional work served to underscore the significance of contemporary Central American and Caribbean art. Last year, she was awarded the Magón Prize, a lifetime achievement award for work in the field of culture, given by the government of Costa Rica. Virginia was also a member of our Caribbean Crossroads curatorial team. Her expertise will be sorely missed.



Cultural Fusion Through a Camera

Cultural Fusion Through a Camera

by Polibio Diaz

You, the viewer, the unhurried passerby, see an open door. Inside, flora, fauna, and gimcracks jump out, a crowded and colorful interior. It arouses the neighbor’s envy, and if all that isn’t enough its inhabitants call attention to themselves even more, by playing the stereo as loud as possible (Bachata or Reggaeton), so it’s impossible for them to go unnoticed. It’s no coincidence we’ve been declared the second happiest country in the world, though we don’t have a nickel to our names.

I present my Dominican interiors as polyptychs, multi-layered single shots which may then be broken apart and reconstructed. It’s as if the shot itself is composed of puzzle pieces. The result resembles a collage. I like to refer to these photographs as my sancocho, a Dominican dish that mixes elements of the Spanish and Caribbean cultures.

While studying photography and civil engineering in the United States, I learned about the art of several masters—Eadweard Muybridge’s motion capture, Edward Weston’s soft focus, Cartier Bresson’s eye, Walter Evans’s humanity, Eugène Atget’s intense vision—that have formed the foundation of my sancocho. When I returned to Santo Domingo and began taking photographs, I employed the works of these individuals in developing my own style, which combines American Expressionism with a variety of European Caribbean influences.
The mark America made on me was not at all academic. Quite the contrary. Without my American training, I would never have acquired the ingredients I needed to develop a unique and honest sancocho. When I click the shutter or assemble my polyptychs, I simply let the objects around me inspire me.

For decades, Caribbean artists have been fighting to be heard, read and seen through their music, literature and art. As a people, Caribbean islanders long to take their place within the contemporary art scene. The stamp of new voices from the Caribbean has intensified recently, and broken down the “border” that demarcated today’s art, blurring it and widening it, without delving into the artist’s place of origin so much as responding to a global discourse. I think that this discourse has allowed my Interiors exhibition to take part in international events like the Venice Biennale and Kreyol Factory in the Parc de La Villette in Paris.

Caribbean art is the product of our ancestors’ efforts, who paved the way for new generations of artists to explore their roots within a modern setting. Without forgoing the memories of centuries of civilization and barbarism, as a new generation of artists, we have begun to walk in the path of our predecessors. We concentrate on the present, expanding the borders that once limited us, allowing the pre-established canons of contemporary art to widen and alight in the Caribbean, enabling us to influence a broad panorama of culture abroad. We derive inspiration from the interior of humble shacks in the islands of the Caribbean, shacks that are always dressed in their Sunday best, where the sun shines in anticipation of the eye of another artist who will click the shutter and celebrate life, even in the face of misfortune.

Translated by Hoyt Rogers

Polibio Diaz is a photographer from Barahona, Dominican Republic. His work has been featured in the Venice Biennale and the Brooklyn Museum. Diaz also serves as Cultural Adviser for the Dominican Minister of Foreign Affairs. His art, he says, is “oriented first and foremost toward my fellow Dominicans.” Three of his photographs were recently selected to join the Unit Works of Art and Special Projects at the UNESCO in Paris.

Photos by Polibio Diaz

Studio Visits in Puerto Rico

On October 31 and November 1, 2009 Caribbean Crossroads spent time on the Isla del Encanto, visiting with a few local artists and some venerable institutuions. Together with curator Rebeca Noriega-Costas, our first stop was at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico to see the new solo exhibition of work by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, Azul. This show features a number of large-scale works and few drawings from earlier periods. Focusing on the figure, Roche has created his own legacy based on personal narrative and the history of art. We were led through the exhibition by Mr. Roche himself, which was an enlightening treat.

Following a quick batido of mixed fruits and an empanadilla de pollo at the Mercado, we stopped at the spare, design-conscious home of Quintin Rivera Toro. The artist presented us with a few works from 2002 to 2009, including a series inspired by films and other that explores language, space and the human presence.

Around the corner from Quintin is the home/studio of Chemi Rosado Seijo, who discussed his most recent construction from found materials, a skate bowl-cum-swimming pool in the La Perla district of San Juan. The bowl has been featured in a number of magazines around the world and is a popular site for San Juan's skaters and for neighbors looking for a cool place to relax on the weekends, when the bowl is filled with water.

Finally, we visited with Melvin Martinez. The artist showed us a number of newer paintings, one of which he has re-started for the third time, having first covered it with pages from Artforum, then layered it with black paint and text and, finally, with a think impasto of silica gel, acrylic paint and glitter. The inscrutable canvases are a departure from his measured images of wallpaper-like desisgns but are just as palatable. A set of shelves in the back held an assortment of small sculptures of animals, toys, and other objects covered in thick layers of colorful paint and glitter--practically lickable.

At the very end, a visit to the Museo de Arte de Ponce, which has a branch at the local commercial behemoth, Plaza Las Americas. This was a fabulous collection of works, mostly paintings and a few scuptures, that ranged in date from the colonial period through the end of the 20th century. Next year, we will be making the trip to Ponce to see the striking Edward Durrell Stone building after its renovations and all of its fabulous contents.

Studio Visits in Puerto Rico

Last week, July 7-9, 2010, Caribbean Crossroads again spent a few days on La Isla del Encanto and visited with some superfly artists, including Carlos Ruiz Valarino, Omar Obdulio Pena Forty, Aaron Salabarrias, and Jesus Bubu Negron. One of the pleasures of studio visists is getting to know the personalities behind the works that we already admire. These visits are part of the continued research and development of the larger Caribbean Crossroads project. Future visits will include Karlo Andrei Ibarra and Isabel Ramirez Pagan. Check out the links!

Caribbean Crossroads in Colombia

In February, the Caribbean Crossroads group made its fourth research trip to the Caribbean coast of Colombia. We stopped in Barranquilla to observe Carnival celebrations. This photograph features one of the floats in the fabmous Batalla de Flores parade. We also stayed some time in Barranquilla and Bogota. Among the institutions visited were the Observatorio del Caribe, Museo San Pedro Claver, Parque Cultural del Caribe, Museo del Oro, Museo del Caribe, Museo de Arte Moderno de Barranquilla, Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena, MAMBogota, Musseo Nacional de Colombia, and Bilbioteca Luis Angel Arango/Museo del Banco de la Republica, among many others. We visited with numerous artists including Johanna Calle, Oscar Leone, Alvaro Barrios, Delcy Morelos, Clemenia Echeverri, Rafael Ortiz and the collective Mal de Ojo, Alberto Baraya, Beatriz Gonzalez, Lilana Angulo, Jose Alejandro Restrepo, Juan Manuel Echeverria, and Domingo Izuierdo, among others. If you are interested in knowing more about our trip and research there, please email us.

Elia Alba: Busts

New York, NY (November, 2009): Black & White Gallery is very pleased to present Busts - the dynamic and thought provoking exhibition by the New York based artist Elia Alba.

The exhibition features 30 busts placed on pedestals to emulate a presentation of classical art and artifacts. Alba transformed unique photographs she took of her close family and friends into life size head and chest sculptures. Utilizing her typical manipulation of photography, fabric, and portraiture, Elia Alba’s latest series, Busts, removes all of these elements from their usual 2-D existence and creates 3-D sculptures that convey both the materiality of the medium and the humanity of the subjects. Each bust stares at the viewer, some forlorn and serious, others smirking knowingly. Some busts stand alone and resolute, such as Catlin, whose hair covers much of the bust, while other busts stand in relation to themselves, as in Two Cacys, where Alba duplicated one person in order to shine a light on his dual nature. Whereas in previous bodies of work, Alba has attempted to obfuscate race, gender, and identity with masks and staging, with Busts, Alba reveals her subjects’ true personas.

Elia Alba (*1962) is a multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited and screened at various national and international institutions, including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; El Museo del Barrio; The RISD Museum; Valencia Institute of Modern Art, IVAM, Spain; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ARCO, Madrid; Jersey City Museum; Science Museum, London; and ITAU Cultural Institute, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and most recently the 10th Havana Biennial. Her awards have included the Whitney Museum Van Lier Foundation Fellowship 2001; Studio Museum in Harlem, Artist in Residence Fellowship Program (1998-1999), New York Foundation for the Arts Grant (Crafts 2002 and Photography 2008); Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant (2002) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2002 and 2008). Her work has been reviewed in the Art Nexus, The Guardian, Time Out, FlashArt, Tema Celeste and The New York Times. Ms. Alba received her Bachelor of Arts (Specials Honors Curriculum) from Hunter College in 1994 where she graduated magna cum laude and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. Elia Alba lives and works in Queens, NY

Image: Busts (Catlin), 2009
photo transfer on fabric, acrylic, thread, metal armature, life size

Arnaldo Roche Rabell at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico

October 24 - December 20, 2009

This year, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico commemorates its 25th anniversary and begins this important period of celebration with an exhibition of recent work by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, titled Azul (Blue).

Roche is one of the most significant and well-known Puerto Rican artists on the island and internationally. His pictorial work has been characterized by its emphasis on problematizing the limits of figuration and the representation of the human body, expanding the use of color and elaborating a narrative art that oscillates between emblematic and direct political questioning, and the construction of a subjectivity that is concerned with personal mythology. Frequently, the public and private have mixed in this work, known for its color, its formal daring and for its adherence to the human figure and an inventory of everyday objects. Azul presents a substantial change from the artist's traditional practices. Recurring, almost exclusively to blue monochrome and pure white line, to the carving of pigment on paper or linen, and to the creation of work on a much larger scale, Roche represents his notion of the figure and narrative and represents his of working the pictorial plane. In the new images, the characterstic iconography of the artist persists, but it is reconfigured austerely in order to emphasize the meanings behind the imagery.

This new pictorial sobriety, which distances itself from the explosion of color and texture of his previous work, may be unexpected to the wider audiences that are familiar with the artist's work. Despite this, this new style was already latent his work of the 1970s and 1980s. To illustrate this development, along with new works, the exhibition presents works from earlier periods in which this new direction is readily apparent.

Azul has been curated by Dr. Lilliana Ramos Collado, Dr. Ivette Fred Rivera and Marianne Ramírez Aponte, Executive Director of MAC.

¡Aquí! (Here) – An Uptown Latino Art Exhibition

¡Aquí! (Here) – An Uptown Latino Art Exhibition at the NoMAA Gallery

September 25 – December 30

¡Aqui! (Here) is the first group exhibition of its kind at NoMAA’s newly inaugurated gallery space in Washington Heights. ¡Aqui! (Here) exposes works by local artists depicting their creative experiences within our neighborhoods, as well as celebrate Latino arts and cultures uptown from September (Hispanic heritage month) through December 2009. A panel of jurors selected the fifteen artists exhibiting in the show whose work was curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Associate Curator, Special Projects at El Museo del Barrio.

¡Aqui! (Here) es la primera exposición colectiva de este tipo que albergará la recientemente inaugurada galería de arte de NoMAA, en Washington Heights. ¡Aqui! (Here) muestra obras de artistas locales acerca de sus experiencias creativas dentro de nuestras vecindades, y servirá para celebrar las artes y culturas Latinas del Alto Manhattan desde septiembre (mes de la herencia hispana) hasta diciembre 2009. Quince artistas fueron seleccionados por un jurado para exhibir su trabajo en esta exposición curada por Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Associate Curator, Speical Projects, El Museo del Barrio.

Artists:

Andrea Arroyo

Alta Berri

Héctor Canonge

Lucho Capellán

Niccolo Cataldi

Florencio Gelabert

Anthony Gonzalez

Maggie Hernandez

Jessica Lagunas

Roni Mocan

Dionis Ortiz

Frank Polanco

Rojelio Reyes Rodriguez

Rider Ureña

Chinitas Yon

info@nomaanyc.org

Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance

178 Bennett Avenue, 3rd Floor (at 189th Street)

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 11am-5pm

NoMAA’s mission is to cultivate, support and promote the works of artists and arts organizations in Northern Manhattan. Since 2007, NoMAA has been serving and promoting the works of artists in these communities as well as developing partnerships with businesses and other organizations to increase the visibility of this area of Manhattan. NoMAA’s programs include the Regrant Program, Technical Assistance Institute, NoMAA Website, NoMAA E-Newsletter, Uptown Arts Stroll, First Thursdays Arts and Business Stroll, and the NoMAA Artists’ Salon.

Dominican Artists in the Bronx!

Samaná: Images of the Dominican Republic features photographs by Marino Corniel, Elaine Eversley and Ryan Mann-Hamilton of the Samaná peninsula which was settled in the 1820s by freed slaves from the United States. Portraits and landscapes of this unique region with a special emphasis on the descendants of the African-American settlers and the impact of development projects on the environment and the traditional cultures of the peninsula. This show is a presentation of Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture and is curated by Wallace I. Edgecombe. On view in the Main Gallery September 28 through November 7.

Research Trips to Washington, D.C. and New Orleans

During the past two weeks, Caribbean Crossroads has made trips to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and to the Latin American Library at Tulane University (also an alma mater of Caribbean Crossroads). The trip to the Library of Congress was organized specifically to look at rare books, maps, watercolors, and prints from the Kislak Collection. This phenomenal collection contains over 4000 books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and other artifacts amassed during his lifetime by Mr. Jay Kislak. Among the objects consulted in the collection were 19th century travel guides to places like Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, and Martinique and an "Album pintoresco" of Cuba, with over 20 color lithographs of various scenes on the island. A trip across the street to the Prints and Photographs division afforded exploration of photographs published by Look magazine from the mid 20th century. This included great views of ultra modern hotels built throughout the Caribbean to bolster the tourism industry. In New Orleans, a trip to the Latin American Library at Tulane University yielded a view of a fabulous mid-nineteenth century map of the Caribbean basin, featuring the mouth of the Mississippi River extending deep into the Gulf of Mexico and a host of 19th century post cards and other wonderful ephemera. The image above is the oldest example of Creole architecture in New Orleans, the Jean Pitot home, built in the late 18th century and marked by the typical characteristics of Caribbean architecture, including floor to ceiling shuttered windows to allow for proper flow of air in the tropical climate as well as protection from harsh storms.

New slideshow

Hello all, we've just added a slide show featuring images from the Curatorial Team's visit to Curaçao and Aruba. Among the images are pictures of our visits to Landhuis Kenepa, the Mongui Maduro Library, and an architectural tour of the historic Otrobanda neighborhood in Willemstad, Curaçao.