This exhibition shines a bright light on a selection of artists who were featured in the inaugural CArt (Caribbean Art) Fair in late January and early February 2020 in Mandeville Jamaica. The Fair seems like another lifetime as a little over a month later the world began to go into isolation facing the uncertainty of a global pandemic. The rising health crisis made the need for a comprehensive look at Caribbean art seem far less urgent. Then came the rise of the Black Lives Matter global movement, the protests and conversations about racism, and how the free labour of indigenous Africans from the transatlantic slave trade was used to build the modern capitalist society. These events shifted the conversations about the role the Caribbean has played in the development of the “new world” making the voice of the artists from this region and the larger diaspora more relevant than ever.
In difficult times, art has been an essential part of human survival. Artists create works that provide everything from a temporary escape to an important interpretive record of the human condition that lasts long past any given challenging time. Miles Regis, a Trinidadian artist living in Los Angeles has been creating new work in response to the Covid-19 pandemic through imagery of people in quarantine. His current work also references the killing of George Floyd which brought about a new wave of anti-racist activism. Regis has been sharing his creations on social media to underscore the need for lasting change, justice and accountability.
Owen Gordon, a Jamaican artist who has made Toronto his home since the early 1980s has also been prolific in his continued creation despite the collapsing normality around him, albeit with a less literal examination of the current circumstances. Gordon’s art practice demonstrates what happens when traditional Western training meets migration and resettlement in large city centres like Toronto.
The photographic works of Jamaican artist Storm Saulter, an acclaimed filmmaker are included here as a commentary on urban strife, community and family dynamics in Jamaica. Janice Reid and Christina Leslie, local emerging photographers, bring perspectives of first generation Canadians raised by Jamaican parents in the Toronto area where a strong African-Caribbean culture is in continuous conversation with the myriad of other voices found in the region.
Vanley Burke is a Windrush era photographer whose work documents the lives of Black Britons who immigrated from the Commonwealth Caribbean countries to the UK after the Second World War. His work is an important reflection of a time when records were used as double-edged sword for and against Blacks. Historic documents show how Black British Empire subjects were used as free labour after the War to rebuild the British Empire.
The works featured in this exhibition were created by artists from the English Caribbean islands. They explore themes of identity, community, colonization, globalization, social justice, activism and climate change. The exhibition provides a small window unto the complex beauty and inherent tensions of Caribbean cultural identity that connect this region and the larger Caribbean diaspora to the world. It is with great hope that this exhibition in its focus on English Caribbean art can help viewers begin to explore and shape a more wholistic narrative for the entire region which is also comprised of French and Dutch islands, and highlight a distinct yet ultimately connected Caribbean aesthetic, alongside the already celebrated Latin American/Caribbean voices. In exploring this region, we bring attention to a too often ignored area and to the ways in which we are all ultimately connected.
