No. 6 volume of ARC Magazine brings together a mélange of artists, scholars and writers in a collaboration of exploring and experimenting with formal and preconceived elements of beauty, alchemy, aesthetics, nationhood, independence and burdens of representations. Featured artists and writers from Haiti, The Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Chile, France, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, Aruba, Suriname, the Netherlands, the United States, and Australia interrogate and expand on a variety of media including photography, sculpture, painting, illustration, new media, drawing, performance and mixed media.
Trinidadian artist and scholar Dr. Andil Gosine intervenes with Shastri Maharaj’s practice. Gosine traverses the traditional surface of Maharaj’s work to resolve the reconstitution of memory and identity that re-imagines Indianness in its relationship to the creolite. Martinican writer Suzanne Lampla explores the growing exploration of artists conquering the streets to present social, political and multicultural concerns. Through the works of Thierry Alet, Alfredo Jaar and Claude Cauquil, Lampla analyses the use of the street as an unlimited source of inspiration, offering artists another way to communicate with the world while emphasizing the importance of tradition and truth.
Educator and writer Janice Cheddie addresses the formal works of Sasha Huber, who investigates familial and historical bonds with Haiti while confronting sites of colonization and belonging. Huber claims a space and the right to construct narratives that challenge and question historical assumptions. Anne Errey eulogizes Jamaican sculptor Laura Facey’s Radiant Combs in a beguiling essay, which seeks to explore the metaphysical and spiritual awakening of the prolific artist. In this space of quietude and reflection, alchemy, healing and acceptance are assimilated in a series of large-scale works that interact with the rolling mountains of Jamaica.
A collaborative project conceived by Guadeloupean artist Audry Liseron-Monfils and writer Frédérique Blaize reveals a mind map that traverses the mental scape of the artist as he broods self-consciously, philosophically and contradictory in verse. What may be ARC’s most ambitious study to date occurs when critic and educator Dr. Erica M. James deconstructs the work of Bahamian artist Blue Curry. Working with tropes that are stereotypically exotic, Curry’s installations and objects border on the elusive and are defiant of categorization as they examine wholeness, material and meaning.
UK-based photographer Roshini Kempadoo collaborates with Marta Fernández Campa to produce an exchange that highlights the artist’s interrogations on the politics of representation. Kempadoo’s practice critiques historical representations of the black body; by embracing digital advancements and technologies, the artist develops work that speaks to the archive’s importance in the creation of a multi-vocal and perspectival exploration of cultural and socio-political ruptures in the United Kingdom. Curator of El Museo del Barrio Rocio Aranda-Alvarado’s comprehensive study of ’The Body in Caribbean Art’ details the work of Janine Antoni, Elia Alba, Renée Cox and Ana Mendieta. This contemporary overview engages with the way the body is studied, analyzed and referenced as a deeply political and referential site for many prominent contemporary artists in the diaspora. Continuing our engagement with institutions across the region, we present the graduating work of six students from the College of The Bahamas in a portfolio coordinated by educator and contemporary artist Heino Schmid.
Issue 6 features the work of Audry Liseron-Monfils, Albert Chong, Michael Spears, Stacey Tyrell, Steven Schmid, Gabriel Ramos, Shastri Maharaj, Roshini Kempadoo, Sasha Huber, Renée Cox, Wendy Nanan, JB Barret, Ryan Oduber, Manuel Mathieu, Patricia Kaersenhout, Olivia McGilchrist, Andy Robert, Laura Facey, Nancy Hoffmann, Ana Mendieta, Cydne Coleby, Christina Darville, Giovanna Swaby, Tyler Miller, Veronica Dorsett, Yutavia George, Alyson Holder and Mickael Caruge. With essays and interviews by Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Andre Bagoo, Frédérique Blaize, Dominique Brebion, Marta Fernández Campa, Janice Cheddie, Andil Gosine, Anne Errey, Rob Perrée, Mandisa Pantin, Dr. Erica M. James, Suzanne Lampla and Heino Schmid.
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