La serie “Field Guide (Guía de campo)” de Adler Guerrier incluye fotografías, obras en papel y grabados en tela en diálogo con pensamientos sobre los espacios caribeños, ritos, gestos simbólicos y el marco cultural de su paisaje. Las obras reflejan un compromiso continuo con el estudio del lugar, lo que contiene y la interpretación de sus texturas como forma y lenguaje, tanto literario como visual.
En cada lugar donde presenta la serie, Guerrier considera un aspecto particular del sitio, definido por una escala íntima y un uso cotidiano modesto, que se convierte en el espacio para un discurso sostenido sobre lo material, lo social y lo aspiracional.
Para la 23 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guerrier desarrolla una instalación de obras nuevas destinadas a un espectador en Antigua Guatemala, que conocerá el paisaje de la diáspora negra Miami-Haití-Caribe. Trabajando en este campo y con estos pensamientos, Guerrier comprende el lugar y el paisaje como sitio y escenario. A través de sus obras, reordena las narrativas, los objetos y las relaciones para enmendar lo encontrado y establecido por la historia, actualizándolos con los lenguajes de lo imaginario.
Registro fotográfico: dirección de arte, Karen Bethancourt; producción, Byron Mármol. Cortesía de Fundación Paiz
“bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños” Curadores: Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig (@fbirbragher) y Juan Canela (@juan_canela_) Asamblea curatorial: Minia Biabiany, Marilyn Boror Bor, Duen Sacchi y Juana Valdés Programa de saberes compartidos, @esperanzadeleon3 Actividades: 30 de marzo al 30 de julio Exposición: 13 al 30 de julio
Sparkling Islands: Another Postcard of the Caribbean is a collective exhibition born from the initiative of Caryl Ivrisse Crochemar, founder of the Espace d’art contemporain 14N61W, an art gallery located in Fort-de-France, on the island of Martinique.
«Last year at 1-54 New York edition we discussed about doing a focus on artists of African descent, whether they were based in the United States, in the Caribbean or elsewhere, in order to strengthen their tides with the African diaspora in the art scene, because they still seemed to be worlds apart, even though they are actually linked. This is not something that comes naturally for both communities, but the integration of our gallery in 1-54 for so many years aroused the interest of many Caribbean artists towards the fair».
When thinking about the Caribbean, most people – whether they have ever visited the archipelago or not – picture sunny beaches and crystal-clear waters. Sparkling Islands: Another Postcard of the Caribbean does not wish to contradict such image, but to expand it: «There is also the historical part, the broken history of the Caribbean in general, the pre-Columbian history, the proto-colonial history, the post-colonial history and the present development».
In such a variety of themes there was «a multitude of possible messages», but the curators preferred to conceive the exhibition in the «simplest way possible, as a series of snapshots, just like the postcards you send to your friends from a holiday vacation». Still, these postcards tell a different story from the mainstream narration of the Caribbean archipelago: «We attract the visitors’ attention towards something that they would probably pass by if they went to the Caribbean. It is 2023 and we are at a crossroads of many things in culture, identity, gender, and we need to experience this diversity as creatively as we can».
The artworks featured in the exhibition neither follow any particular red thread nor aim to offer an overall insight of Caribbean art and culture: «This would have been impossible; the exhibition is just an open door to a much vaster environment. The Caribbean is neither compact nor homogeneous. Due to its history, which we may call “a discontinuous continuity”, the archipelago is a melting pot. It is not to be forgotten that the Caribbean were the first point of entry into America for the West, both Europe and Africa. So, when you pull one thread, you just end up pulling many, such as identity, diversity, cultural mixing, colonialism, post-colonialism, future. In the end, the only possible red thread is the public, who will be able to take all the information received from the exhibition in the direction they choose».
Adler Guerrier was born in Haiti, but now works in Miami. He uses the form of collage – which he regards as a democratizing technique – to subvert space and time in constructions of race, ethnicity, class and culture.
Sparkling Islands, Another Postcard of the Caribbean at High Line Nine. Photo : Eva Sakellarides
1-54 is pleased to present Sparkling Islands, Another Postcard of the Caribbean, a group exhibition of contemporary Caribbean artists coinciding with the fair’s 9th New York edition. This is the first exhibition by 1-54 Presents, a new programme of pop-up exhibitions by 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair; curated by Caryl Ivrisse Crochemar; 11 – 20 May 2023.
Carolina Alvarado (Guatemala); Margarita Azurdia (Guatemala); Minia Biabiany (Guadalupe); Marilyn Boror Bor (Guatemala); Zoila Andrea Coc-Chang (Guatemala); Josué Castro (Guatemala); Tz’aqaat – Cheen Cortez y Manuel Chavajay (Guatemala); Roberto Benjamín Escobar (Guatemala); Laia Estruch (España); Adler Guerrier (Haití-USA); Colectivo Ixcrear – Elena Caal, Ixmukane e Ixmayab Quib – (Guatemala); Yavheni de León (Guatemala); Ana Mendieta (Cuba-Estados Unidos); Fina Miralles (España); Helen Mirra (USA); Julieth Morales (Colombia); Verónica Navas González (Costa Rica); María Thereza Negreiros (Brasil-Colombia); La Nueva Cultura Material – Bryan Castro y Valeria Leiva – (Guatemala); Itziar Okaritz (España); Eliazar Ortiz Roa (República Dominicana); Sallisa Rosa (Brasil); Colectivo Tzaquol (Guatemala); Lourdes de la Riva (Guatemala); Duen Sacchi (Argentina); Cecilia Vicuña (Chile); Juana Valdés (Cuba-Estados Unidos); Martin Wannan (Guatemala); Risseth Yangüez Singh (Panamá); Itzel Yard (Panamá)
bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños es un fragmento de un poema de Maya Cú, una de las referentes de la poesía maya en Guatemala, cuyo cuerpo de obra representa la búsqueda de la identidad estableciendo una genealogía femenina y una herencia en resistencia. Sus versos acompañan la construcción de este proyecto, cuyos temas, ideas, participantes y estructura han ido tomando forma en un proceso de trabajo colectivo con una asamblea curatorial convocada por Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig y Juan Canela y conformada junto a Minia Biabiany, Marilyn Boror Bor, Duen Sacchi y Juana Valdés. A partir de las primeras intuiciones compartidas, las distintas conversaciones y encuentros se han ido trenzando alrededor de las vinculaciones existentes entre lengua, cuerpo y territorio. Escritura, oralidad, relato, corporalidad, presencia, movimiento, comunidad, territorialidad, paisaje, naturaleza, o comunidad son algunos conceptos que emergen a partir de esas relaciones, articulando narrativas que desafían relatos hegemónicos, e imaginando futuros que ahondan en posibilidades de vidas en común.
El proyecto se construye a partir de una polifonía de voces que emergen del diálogo con las artistas participantes y las reflexiones que emanan de sus trabajos. Voces y gestos que brotan de cada territorio específico a partir de experimentar con lo próximo para articular espacios de encuentro. Existe una voluntad inequívoca de trabajar desde certezas no definidas que nacen de espacios intuitivos y de sólidas espiritualidades diversas. Los distintos proyectos se adentran en territorios lingüísticos, poéticos, oníricos, telúricos, políticos, anímicos, emocionales o afectivos en los que toman forma materialidades, subjetividades y deseos desde la voluntad de componer puentes.
Además de las obras presentadas en exposición, se desarrolla un Programa de saberes compartidos curado por Esperanza de León. Un plan de recursos de mediación pensados para introducir la bienal en un desplazamiento gradual, que, de menor a mayor complejidad, acercan las temáticas a los públicos expandiendo la temporalidad de la misma. La idea es que estos formatos pedagógicos y discursivos se abran desde el encuentro de saberes y conocimientos complementarios, y a los que se invita al público general, artistas locales o comunidades específicas. Comprendiendo la necesidad de pensar este tipo de actividades de mediación con unos tiempos propios que exceden lo expositivo, el programa comienza en el mes de marzo, abriendo la posibilidad de los encuentros con las audiencias desde antes de comenzar la muestra, y comprendiendo la bienal como un proyecto cuya complejidad se desarrolla con distintos formatos, intensidades, vibraciones y acciones.
Ante la crisis climática, social y estructural de las sociedades globales, es fundamental abrazar la escucha amplia, la mirada atenta, la atención cercana y la ternura radical. Que los sorbos oníricos de cada lengua hagan recordar las palabras de las abuelas y honrar a las ancestras, para así imaginar un futuro común capaz de tejernos a las unas con las otras.
Curadores Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig y Juan Canela
Asamblea curatorial Minia Biabiany, Marilyn Boror Bor, Duen Sacchi y Juana Valdés
Programa de saberes compartidos Esperanza de León
Actividades: 30 marzo – 30 julio 2023
Exposición: 13 – 30 Julio 2023
[Sedes Ciudad de Guatemala]Centro Cultural de España, Centro Cultural Municipal Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, Portal de La Sexta[Sedes Antigua]La Nueva Fábrica, Centro de Formación de La Cooperación Española
Locust Projects presents Locust Projects presents Room for the living/ Room for the dead, a new site-specific commissioned project by Miami-based artist T. Eliott Mansa.
The immersive and interactive installation merges the concept of Florida / Family rooms as a home’s casual, social hub for gathering, entertainment and play, with that of less-used living rooms that served as shrines for treasured family photos and heirlooms. Inspired/influenced by the artist’s friend and writer Noelle Barnes’ living room and the artist’s own memories of sunken living rooms of the 1970s, the artist considers the cultural phenomena of the living room as unlived, unoccupied, untouched spaces that children and guests were prohibited from using.
T. Eliott Mansa: Room for the living/Room for the dead 2022, installation view at Locust Projects. Photography by Zachary Balber.
Kerry James Marshall’s exhibition, Mementos, at the Renaissance Society in 1998, is a requiem to the 60s, a decade synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement.
Conceived as an installation for the Renaissance Society, it features three new paintings, two sculptural components, a video projection and is replete with an angelic pantheon of African-American cultural and political figures who died between 1959 and 1979. Marshall uses the genre of history painting to reread the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and the whole of African-American History in relation to a very complex present.
This exhibition traveled to Brooklyn Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Fine Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Santa Monica Museum; and Boise At Museum.
Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir I, 1997, acrylic with glitter on unstretched canvas, 9 x 13 feet, Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund.
Marshall modeled the settings of the Souvenir series after black middle class living rooms that have the shrine-like quality of Depression-proof interiors, as static and eternal as a plastic plant in a plastic pot. They are rooms where loved ones captured in the first generation of color photography yellow to the tick of a too accurate clock. There is a place for everything and everything is in its place, including the gaudy yet priceless souvenir cherished as a reminder of people and places that make up a life. It is where memorabilia from the births, graduations, weddings, anniversaries and funerals of a hundred distant relatives are preserved. For African Americans, all of whose lives were in some way affected by the struggle for equality, it is impossible to think of a room made claustrophobic with memories that does not double as a shrine to saints Kennedy and King.
Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir II, 1997, Acrylic with glitter on unstretched canvas, 9 x 13 feet, Courtesy of Addison Gallery of Art, purchased as a gift of the Addison Advisory Council in honor of John (Jock) M. Reynold’s directorship, 1989-1998.Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir III, 1998, Acrylic with glitter on unstretched canvas, 9 x 13 feet, Courtesy of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir IV, 1998, Acrylic with glitter on unstretched canvas, 9 x 13 feet, Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art.
Tina Campt on episode 8 of ICA Miami’s podcast; begins at 22:54. Listening as an act of attunement. Listening for quiet (not an absence/subtle presence) affective registers within an image, a work, an installation, a practice.
“Attend to that which is not always directly confronting us”
The installation merges the concept of Florida / Family rooms as a home’s casual, social hub for gathering, entertainment and play, with that of less-used living rooms that served as shrines for treasured family photos and heirlooms. Inspired/influenced by the artist’s friend and writer Noelle Barnes’ living room and the artist’s own memories of sunken living rooms of the 1970s, the artist considers the cultural phenomena of the living room as unlived, unoccupied, untouched spaces that children and guests were prohibited from using.
As an alternative, many people used ‘Florida/Family rooms’ to entertain company and watch television. Meanwhile, in the ‘unlived’ living rooms, many elders wrapped the furniture in protective plastic. For Mansa, these living rooms were treated as shrines–a space honoring one’s ancestors and those who have traveled beyond this plane. With this installation, the artist seeks to collapse the dichotomy between the ‘Living Room’ as shrine, and the ‘Florida/Family room’ in a way that creates ‘a room for the living’ as much as ‘a room for the dead’.
Chris Friday’s Good Times, curated by Laura Novoa, promises to engage quietly expressed modalities within the bold depicted.
[The works] prompt the viewer to consider more expansive notions of blackness and where communities – known and unknown – are given a space to dialogue, reflect, and celebrate.
Friday’s subjects – family, friends, colleagues – and the settings in which they exist, become mechanisms to unsettle traditional hierarchies and arrangements of power. In particular, she presents large-scale drawings of figures in acts of leisure – playing, dancing, resting – that refuse full exposure in a slight but noticeable turning away from the viewer. By placing them in the public realm (i.e. the gallery space), but limiting access to their interiority, Friday’s works inhabit a liminal space that is at once visible and hidden, silent and defiant.
