Symbiosis: A Discourse on the Psycho-Social Jungle of the Jamaican Experience
Winston C. Campbell

Installation detail

‘SYMBIOSIS’ is the title of the newest installation by renowned Trinidadian artist, Marlon Griffith at the CAG(e) Gallery at the Edna Manley College and apparently makes reference to the ever shifting/ever stable interconnections that are present in the Jamaican (and Caribbean) societies. Lexically, the word suggests relations, dependence, mergers, sacrifice, encouragement, similarity, dissimilarity and a host of other inter-connected references. Without being heavily grounded in theoretical approaches to discussing Caribbean peoples and their cultural realities, one cannot help but accept that the term seems quite appropriate when attempting to describe the Jamaican cultural situation.

(more…)

The Un-Familiar

Detail from Roaches and Flowers: War in the Home

This exploration of a psychological crisis is in fact a visual narrative of conquest, where gender politics and violence against women become visible through the vocabulary, iconography, and mechanisms of the home interior. Domestic items such as cutlery and plates, intermingled with flowers and nails, form roaches and other unseemly insect-like forms. These roaches, sometimes camouflaged or constructed with flowers, represent invasion, the unwelcome, the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, found in a space associated with familiarity and comfort.

In Late 2007 Jaime Lee Loy began working with the domestic space as a site of war, intimately exploring the psychological crisis that occurs, when something familiar becomes suddenly unfamiliar.

(more…)

click on image to read more

Alice Yard is the backyard space of the house at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad. This was once the house of architect Sean Leonard’s great-grandmother. Four generations of children played and imagined in this yard, and now Leonard continues this tradition. Since late 2006, Alice Yard has been home to 12, the band led by musician Sheldon Holder. A series of weekly Friday-night “Conversations in the Yard” organised by Holder bring musicians, artists, writers, and audiences together for informal performances and interactions. Alice Yard was pleased to present its first international artist-in-residence: Ugochukwu Bright Eke from Nigeria. He is a winner of the Commonwealth Foundation’s Arts and Craft Award for 2007, and has chosen to use his award grant to visit and work in Trinidad.

Go to Caribbean Beat story

The Universal Human Experience

A Digital Journey - click on the image to see where in the world the artist is currently

Paramount to Kishan Munroe’s project is the investigation of peoples on opposing sides of various contemporary conflicts which have historically changed modern regional and global socio-cultural interaction. The range of the dialogue shall span a myriad of disputes; by way of example: the Holocaust to the Iraqi war to Haitian/Bahamian relations; the white/black racial divide; gang rivalry; controversial Australian Immigration practices; the war against Terrorism; and the Rwandan Civil War.

(more…)