C|Art 2025
C|Art, the Caribbean Art Meet up, is dedicated to promoting a contemporary visual arts movement across the 26 plus countries in the region. C|Art is a multi day, visual art event focused on facilitating and fostering connections between artists, curators, collectors dealers, academics and cultural workers in the Caribbean, UK, North America, Africa and the larger African Diaspora.
The third edition of C|Art will take place from January 30th to February 2nd, 2025, in Montego Bay and Kingston, Jamaica. We’re excited to announce that renowned photographers Vanley Burke and Ronnie Carrington will be joining us for C|Art 2025! In addition, special guests Dr. Deborah Willis and Dr. Christine Checinska will engage in an insightful conversation, promising an unforgettable exchange of ideas and perspectives. It would be wonderful to have you be a part of this incredible gathering of thought leaders and cultural influencers.
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Dr Christine Checinska is a British artist, designer, curator & storyteller. Her work explores the relationship between cloth, culture and race.
Her PhD, Colonizin’ in Reverse! (Goldsmiths, London, 2009), examines the impact of creolised Caribbean culture on English male dress, and questions the relative absence of culturally diverse voices within Global North fashion and textiles studies. Through such work she invokes an interconnected and equitable art and design world where Black creativity, with all its nuances and contradictions, is nurtured and respected.
She has built on these themes in her role as Senior Curator Africa and Diaspora: Textiles and Fashion, and Lead Curator of V&A Museum’s international touring show Africa Fashion , and as Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg. Christine has exhibited her work in the group show The Missing Thread, Somerset House, London, September 2023-January 2024, and Folded Life, Johanne Jacobs Museum, Zurich, February 2021.In 2016, she delivered the TEDxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism examining the fascinating cultural exchanges that occur beyond borders as a result of movement and migration expressed through the clothes we wear, the objects we collect and the art that we make.
Christine is a board member of the British Textile Biennial and the Karun Thakar Fund, Director-at-Large for the Textile Society of America, and serves on the St Paul’s Cathedral, London, Visual Arts Committee.
Headshot by Kayvan Michael Bazergan
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Deborah Willis, Ph.D. is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She has affiliated appointments with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, and the Institute of Fine Arts, where she teaches courses on Photography & Imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She is the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of Slavery and Emancipation, contemporary women photographers, and beauty. She is the author of The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, among others. Dr. Willis’ curated exhibitions include: “Framing Moments in the” Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts, and “Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory” FotoFocus.
Dr. Willis was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and was a Richard D. Cohen Fellow in African and African American Art, Hutchins Center, Harvard University; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. Fellow. She was the Robert Mapplethorpe Photographer in Residence of the American Academy in Rome and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a recipient of the Don Tyson Prize for the Advancement of American Art by the Crystal Bridges Museum in 2022; was named the Mary Lucille Dauray Artist-in-Residence by the Norton Museum of Art and taught her a Master Class titled Home, Reimagining Interiority at Anderson Ranch in 2023.
Headshot by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn of DW
C|Art Programming (TBC)
Thursday, January 30th – Saturday, February 2nd 2025
Thursday: Montego Bay
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: S Hotel
Opening Talk: Caribbean Threads – Featuring Dr. Deborah Willis (Artist, Curator, Photographic historian, Author, Educator) in conversation with Dr. Christine Checinska (Senior Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum)
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Toby’s Resort
DJ Lounge: Liming with cocktails and a light meal
Friday: Montego Bay
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: Toby’s Resort
Breakfast & Book Talk
Crafted Kinship: Inside The Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers
Gaëtane Verna (Curator, Executive Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts) in conversation with Malene Barnett (Artist, Author)
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Take this free time to head to the beach or to explore Montego Bay.
We recommend a visit to Doctors Cave Beach (Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, Montego Bay)
or a Group Visit to the local market
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: National Gallery West
Curatorial Talk: Dr. Julie Crooks (Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario) in conversation with Vanley Burke (Artist) and Christina Leslie (Artist)
Hosted by the National Gallery of Jamaica
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Location: Dinner at Toby’s
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Toby’s Conference Room Artist Talk: Ronnie Carrington (Artist) in conversation with Joséphine Denis (Director of Curatorial Initiatives, BAND)
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Location: Toby’s Bar/Pool
Join us for live music and cocktails by the pool
Saturday: Kingston
08:30 AM
Departure to Kingston
12:30 - 2:00 PM
Malene Barnett’s Book Signing at Locale
2:30 - 3:30 PM
Visit to the Kingston Biennial at National Gallery of Jamaica
3:30 - 4:30 PM
Exhibition Visit: PERSPICACITY at Creativ Space, hosted by Blaq Mango Collective
Sunday: Montego Bay
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Toby’s Resort
Closing Brunch with six lightning presentations and a moderated Q&A, hosted by Blaq Mango Curatorial Collective and Shelley Falconer (President and CEO of the Art Gallery of Hamilton)
Hotel Partner
We’re excited to share that we have partnered with a locally owned hotel in Jamaica Tobys Resort for your upcoming four-day special event. Supporting local businesses is something we truly believe in, and we pride ourselves on giving back to the Jamaican community. Tobys Resort offers an authentic Jamaican experience, with a strong focus on cultural immersion, sustainability, and warm, local hospitality. We’ve reserved rooms at a special rate, available until November 8th. If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, please use the reference code GALLERY and mention #108229 when making your booking.
