Metamorphosis

ARC Magazine Issue 3 Launches

2011-07-25T12:50:00.005-04:00

ARC Magazine announces the release of its third volume, which presents a collection of works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Martin, Santo Domingo, Burkina Faso, and the Bahamas represent a variety of media, including photography, illustration, film, painting, graphic design, poetry, performance, installation and mixed media.

ARC frames its content in sections: SPOTLIGHT highlights emerging artists’ works; 24FPS presents an in-depth look of established and experimental filmmakers; THE GRADIENT offers a dissection of a larger body of specified work; ARTIST ON ARTIST reminisces and heralds the significance of influence and conversation; and COLLECTIONS showcases the portfolios of three artists. We introduce a defined cultural department heading into our third issue, as we continue to probe and characterize the aesthetic container.

Issue III brings together the work of Bahamian conceptual artist Tavares Strachan, whose work explores the realm of possibilities made viable by imagination and technology. Goldsmith scholar and artist Charles Campbell partners with Strachan to explore his idiosyncratic brand of humanism. Trinidadian filmmaker Yao Ramesar collapses time and space defining his aesthetic strategy Caribbeing, where he decodes a visual dialect in Her Second Coming, locating the Caribbean sun as central to the manifest image. First generation Martiniquan painter Elizabeth Colomba’s representations are an encounter of two tribes; through reconciliation she represents and refigures the black subject into the oeuvre of Western art, correcting and re-entering a lost identity.

Featured artist Lavar Munroe‘s illustrations, drawings and digital paintings embrace and translate trauma and pain into surfaces that render complicated staging of colonization and mortality. Dr. Ja A. Jahannes, cultural critic, psychologist and composer, talks with Munroe about his methodology and the deeper powers of spirituality and magical realism. Performance artist Michelle Isava contemplates her space in relation to the internal and external; her honest and provoking attempt to understand her position in society is one of rawness, contempt and ambiguity. Her power shines through her resilience and discomfort. Marcel Pinas’ preservation of Surinamese culture is investigated by Melanie Archer, whose acute understanding of installation and site carries us through a delicate balance decoding Pinas’ mission of protect us; protect our knowledge and protect our culture.

In this collection we strive to honour and understand the role of the imaginary, and the determination of the artist. The threads that weave our hybrid nations together are revealing themselves with a complexity that urges further exploration to discover other representations of site and self, lest we forget that art can be a powerful source of reparation, transformation and evolution. ARC Magazine is a quarterly, independent visual arts magazine made possible by the subscription and support of its readers. ARC is a projected motion that ascends, moves outward and beyond into a space of curiosity.

Artist Talk: Brianna McCarthy

2011-06-05T19:30:00.003-04:00

Check out the premiere episode of our web series "Artist Talk" with Brianna McCarthy. The Trinidadian artist talks about her creative process and her latest piece, Big Fish.

ARC Magazine Issue 2

2011-04-21T21:52:00.003-04:00

ARC Magazine announces the release of its second volume, which presents a collection of works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, St. Lucia, Haiti and Jamaica represent a variety of media including photography, film, painting, drawing, graphic design, illustration, performance and sculpture.

Download Press Release here: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ARC-Magzine-PR-Issue-2-for-Press.pdf

Buy Issue here: https://arcthemagazine.com/arc/issues/

ARC Magazine Issue 2 launches in Trinidad

2011-04-10T21:28:00.002-04:00

To our friends and supporters, ARC is coming to Trinidad.

ARC Magazine in conjunction with Bocas Lit Fest and Alice Yard is pleased to announce the launch of ARC Magazine Issue II on April 27th 2011. Join us for an artist signing, special exhibition and spoken word evening celebrating the works of our artists and contributors.

ARC Magazine will be on sale, so come collect our various scrawls. This event is free and is open to the public, extend the invitation to your various networks. Looking forward to seeing you there and celebrating this milestone with you.

Cheers,

Nadia and Holly

ARC Magazine

RSVP HERE: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=196058707097087

I got a barrel

2011-04-08T02:01:00.003-04:00

and all of a sudden it feels impossible to

untangle the roots that I have been putting

down with vengeance for the last three

years.

Turn of the Tide

2011-03-31T11:24:00.004-04:00

Holly Bynoe talks to Melanie Archer about exile, loss, and reconciliation, and exploring personal and communal archives in her Compounds series. Read the entire interview here: http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/26-march-2011/turn-of-the-tide/

Nadia Huggins: On an island

2011-03-18T12:37:00.003-04:00

Follow On an Island

The Last Book at NYPL

2011-02-06T14:47:00.004-04:00

“The Last Book” will be on view at the Aguilar Branch of the New York Public

Library from February 2 until May 29, 2011. The address is 174 East

110 Street, NYC. This is the third exhibition of the project, after Buenos

Aires and Zurich. The Last book is curated by Luis Camnitzer

Images from the last installment in Zurich:

juliet 8 foxtrot

2011-02-05T16:16:00.004-04:00

ARC Magazine Launch NYC

2011-01-30T14:43:00.002-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcmagazine/5401402285/in/set-72157625814772139/lightbox/

To view photographs from our event please click above and stroll through our

celebration and welcome of ARC to NYC. Thank you for the support, encouragement

and get the word on ARC out there.

Blessings.

Holly

ARC Magazine Launch NYC

2011-01-25T12:24:00.006-04:00

Two Vincentians – Holly Bynoe, a visual artist and Nadia Huggins, a

digital photographer – launch the inaugural issue of ARC Magazine, a collection

of works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora.

Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados,

St. Lucia, Dominica, Haiti and Jamaica, represent a variety of media, including

photography, film and video, painting, graphic illustration, mixed media,

performance and poetry.

Join the founders and a selection of our featured artists and contributors at

the launch/signing, which will be hosted at the ICP Museum Lobby and

Bookstore. ARC Issue 1 will be on sale so bring along you special pens

to collect our various scrawls.

Special reading by Ishion Hutchinson from his new collection "Far District". Limited

Edition Photographic prints will be available to the first 20 patrons, all sales and

proceeds will go to securing printing for 2011. Refreshments and DJ to accompany

the celebration. Invite your friends.

ARC Magazine is a quarterly, independent visual arts magazine dedicated to

showcasing Caribbean Art and Culture. It is made possible by the subscription

and support of its readers.

For more information visit: http://www.arcthemagazine.com/

Up, out and beyond with ARC

2011-01-21T16:33:00.005-04:00

Cover of the first issue of ARC; image courtesy the publishers

Creative work can’t thrive in isolation. Every artist, writer, musician, performer, or filmmaker needs contact with creative peers, a creative tradition, and an attentive audience, but also access to a critical space, a forum for sharing and discussing ideas. To put it more simply, an artist needs not only working time and the tools of her craft, but venues in which her work can be encountered, documented, and evaluated: galleries and museums, catalogues and magazines. For Caribbean visual artists, the latter are in short supply. In the Anglophone Caribbean particularly, visual art publications produced to international standards are rare.

ARC is a bold and brave intervention into this circumstance. Published by two young artists from St Vincent and the Grenadines, ARC defines itself as “a Caribbean art and culture magazine dedicated to highlighting emerging and established artists.” Holly Bynoe, ARC’s editor in chief, and Nadia Huggins, the magazine’s creative director, both work in the medium of photography.ARC is an ambitious extension of their creative practice, and a decisive engagement with the work of their contemporaries in the Caribbean and its diasporas.

The magazine’s website went live this week, and the first quarterly print edition of ARC will be launched later this month (find out how you can get a copy here). It features work by the Jamaican photographer Radcliffe Roye, the British filmmaker (with St Lucian roots) Isaac Julien, and the young Barbadian Sheena Rose, among other artists. Via email, Bynoe and Huggins answered a few questions about the project’s inspiration and intent.

for the rest of the interview please visit: http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/2011/01/20/up-out-and-beyond/

Inside ARC

2011-01-20T18:00:00.002-04:00

ARC Magazine Launches

2011-01-19T11:53:00.004-04:00

www.arcthemagazine.com

Shots of ARC on press.

2011-01-11T12:44:00.004-04:00

we will be soft launching on the 17th of January.

Nadia and I are in the process of organizing three

launches for ARC in NYC, St. Lucia & St. Vincent

here are some shots of ARC and ODDI

www.arcthemagazine.com

Wrestling with the Image

2011-01-08T21:03:00.007-04:00

Four of my collages will be previewed in Wrestling with the Image from the

January 21st to March 10 2011 at the Museum of the Americas.

The Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) announces the opening of Wrestling

with the Image: Caribbean Interventions, an exhibition of contemporary art

from twelve Caribbean countries. Featuring work by artists from the Bahamas,

Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis,

Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and

Tobago, the exhibition is curated by artist and curator Christopher Cozier

and art historian Tatiana Flores.

Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions presents works in a variety

of media, including photography, video, painting, graphic arts, sculpture, and

installation. The scope of the objects demonstrates how the region’s

contemporary artists are confronting stereotypes about the Caribbean without

denying their own surroundings or rejecting the worlds in which they operate.

Through investigations on history, tourism, globalization, popular culture, and

gender, these artists urge us to reconsider our own expectations on how a

Caribbean image should look.

Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions includes work by John Cox,

Blue Curry, Kishan Munroe, Heino Schmid, (The Bahamas); Ewan Atkinson,

Joscelyn Gardner, Sheena Rose, Tonya Wiles (Barbados); Santiago Cal (Belize);

Pauline Marcelle (Dominica); Roshini Kempadoo, Hew Locke (Guyana);

Maksaens Denis, Jean‐Ulrick Désert, Barbara Prézeau‐Stephenson (Haiti);

Charles Campbell, Keisha Costello, Marlon James, Ebony Patterson, Oneika

Russell, Phillip Thomas (Jamaica); Terry Boddie (Saint Kitts and Nevis);

Nadia Huggins, (Saint Lucia); Holly Bynoe, (Saint Vincent and the

Grenadindes);Sri Irodikromo, Patricia Kaersenhout, Marcel Pinas, Dhiradj

Ramsamoedj,(Suriname); Nicole Awai, La Vaughn Belle, Marlon Griffith,

Jaime Lee Loy,Richard Fung, Abigail Hadeed, Nikolai Noel, Rodell Warner,

and Natalie Wood (Trinidad and Tobago).

Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions forms part of the About

Change emerging artists’ program, an initiative of the World Bank in partnership

with the Inter‐American Development Bank, the OAS, and the Caribbean

Community (CARICOM) Secretariat. About Change is a series of juried

exhibitions of contemporary art from Latin America and the Caribbean that

will take place throughout 2011 and 2012 at different venues in Washington,

D.C., including the World Bank, the Art Museum of the Americas, and the

galleries of the Inter‐American Development Bank. It has been organized

by the World Bank Art Program under the auspices of the World Bank Vice

\Presidency for Latin America and the Caribbean Region.

ARC proof

2010-12-30T22:53:00.001-04:00

ARC Cards

2010-12-29T12:01:00.003-04:00

Arc is on the way.

We just got our business cards

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arc-Magazine/155918677753214

a sheep egg

2010-12-12T20:01:00.000-04:00

@2010. moving along.

exploring fantasies

2010-12-08T20:21:00.003-04:00

I have been having the strangest couple of months.

I feel out of place as though some interstitial zone has

opened up its path to me, yet I fear treading its ground.

The fear exists because of past experiences with my

nagging wayward spirit, that seems to be wanting some

respite and stability now that my hardest year is drawing

to a close.

I haven't created anything in months -until recently-and I feel

as though my heart could burst with every moment

of practiced restraint.

Of not knowing what to say and how to say it.

I am working backwards, trailing these fantasies and

memories that have become trapped and silent. Just over a year

ago I remember speaking about preservation. I crave distortion now.

I have a funny feeling about the rapidly approaching new year.

I am yearning to collaborate and cleanse my spirit and body.

I need to feel weightless again.

yellow skin red piss

2010-12-04T17:42:00.001-04:00

yellow skin red piss

Arc

2010-11-23T23:04:00.003-04:00

we have set up a facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Arc-Magazine/155918677753214?ref=mf

keep your eyes peeled at www.arcthemagazine.com

lots of motion in the next month.

the ark: a work in progress

2010-11-14T18:06:00.002-04:00

The Ark, a work in progress.

in variations

2010-11-14T17:47:00.003-04:00

my 2011 resolution is to learn how to

letterpress all of my text pieces.

4 steps

2010-11-12T23:06:00.001-04:00

4 stills from the ark

@2010

the grands

2010-10-26T11:10:00.002-04:00

this morning I woke up and missed

the last days with my father.

a sickness lingering in my throat.

With Imagination little can be done;

2010-10-17T11:45:00.007-04:00

www.littletundra.org

beginning and end

2010-10-16T17:21:00.005-04:00

In 1954, my mother donned her red uniform and stood still whilst a proper

photographer from St. Vincent visited the family on the hill where they

lived at Mount Pleasant. She retells the story to me each time we look

through our family album that is coming apart that its edges. The loose

plastic clinging to the surface of the photographs trapping air and dust

beneath, near the faces, skin and water. I ask her if she remembers the

day, she looks at me with disbelief on her face; most of the time my

mother can barely remember yesterday. I guess she was nine or ten in

the photograph found below.

The more I study this photograph the more I find myself in it. Not in any

of the faces that litter the steps but in her gesture and being, it is

uncanny, at that age I could replace her and no one would be the wiser.

She is at the top standing with her hand on her hip, her wild frizzy hair

making some Holly expression. They are all gathered together for this

important moment, it wasn’t often that photographers came to Bequia

and navigated to the top of the island. I can barely imagine what it looked

like back then: sparsely populated, rolling hills of dry sour grass, small

wooden houses with kitchens and tanks as extensions, thatched galvanized

roofs, pineapple skirts on mothers, schooner filled harbors,

wharf-less shores.

Yet I am privy to this world, to scenes that would be impossible for me to

recall. I can sit years later and talk about that specific moment, and all the

moments that spiral out of its center because of the existence of this

photograph and numerous others. I can recall the scent of the sea and the

wind as it captures me in the moment of positioning myself where that step

used to be. The faint scent of rotting mangoes, cashews and plums rising in

the air, and the evening turning a piercing warm before the sun drops

beyond the horizon line like a heavy globular God. All of these things

I envision in a single unchanging moment, time inside me standing still.

I find myself now at the end of the beginning of this unquantifiable thing;

the journey has been at times treacherous and enlightening, but I have had a

companion, my work. There is an omnipresent advent light protruding forth

from the horizon in my dreams, usually it is tangled up in some diluted and

deluded fantastical realm or in the arms of a nightmare. I am seeing things

that have been hidden from me, hopes and dreams buried by previous

encounters with hostility, anger and insecurity the many revelations and

Revelations, the alphas and omegas.

Yet I remain at the crux of understanding the freedom of this light, its

action, fluxes and waves. In the beginning there was light. I am learning to

embrace its life and rays; I am beginning to believe, as an act of generosity

and as an active gift of love.

fracture

2010-09-26T00:13:00.003-04:00

is it the fact that i have been tucked under

my mother's skirt for the last four months

that I have suddenly become really aware

of fabric, tapestry and its potential?

a work in progress.

tucked under her skirt

i am exposed to her flesh

and to the fabric that swings gently from

her hips.

swish, swish, swish.

her body broken and aged, distorted

now in sleep, a permanent sorrow

has taken the place of rest. Nightmares

sound like whines, that God cant reach.

shriek, shriek, shriek

Yet she lays in tormented rest

unshaken; steady in her faith,

comforted without gestures.

A miracle transpired.

inversion

2010-09-16T23:59:00.004-04:00

My trekking back to the erudite North is

what the doctor ordered. The wheels have

gathered their tyre rough-edged black back.

I am ready to attack, pounce and step outside of

any known comfort zone.

Tonight I feel able, for the first time in

months. My mind, a mass of clouds, but

clarity and silence slivering its way through.

Today, a kind compatriot whispered to

me about destination and considering

art as an entity belonging in a physical

place/space. A definition that anchored me

in feeling comfortable to arrive to an end, not a

finality but a beginning to think about work

on walls, within a boundary of material.

I am considering pages again- paper and its

tactility- as an invitation to produce work

on transitions has made its way on my list

of gracious opportunities.

Up North contains a collection of unforeseen treasure.

Not some wayward dream of an easy road,

but a budding network of island aromas that wash over

me in image and words. Tonight I am grateful for my mind,

for the collection of people around me and mostly

for the embedded passion I have for the picture, the scrawl,

the murmur, the motion, the light, the color and the rendering

of imaginations and souls.

stir it up!

2010-09-12T17:07:00.005-04:00

She threw a musky

netting over our heads

to protect us from the noise that

bellowed up from the inside out

when isolation was confused with

the stillness of silent tongues.

Diffusion Magazine: Ortus

2010-09-06T22:19:00.002-04:00

My work has been selected to be included

and featured in Diffusion Magazine

Volume III, 2011 –

Group Showcase

Theme: Ortus (Latin) — rise, become visible, appear, birth, origin.

Along side other artists

Barbara J. Dombach

Becky Ramotowski

Brenda Biondo

Brian Jolley

Brianna Burnett

Buzzy Sullivan

Catie Soldan

Catlin Harrison

Colin Edgington

Deon Reynolds

Elspeth Maxwell

Gail Pine

Grace Kim

Greg Kemp

Heather Leavitt

Holly Bynoe

Jason Kelley

Jeffrey Crowe

Jessica Somers

John Bridges

Juliana Cala

Kirsten Hoving

Laura Hartford

Lisa McCarty

Lori Bell

Matt Frantz

Michael Kirchoff

Michel Pincaut

Nicole Campanello

Niniane Kelley

Polly Chandler

Rebecca Clark

Rebecca Harlan

Richard Hricko

Rómulo Peña

Ross Sonnenberg

Ryan Zoghlin

S. Gayle Stevens

Tarja Trygg

Teresa Nabais

Arc Magazine Survey

2010-09-03T22:04:00.006-04:00

Dear Friends, Family and Colleagues,

I want to make you aware that Nadia Huggins and I have

decided to collaborate on our first project which will be the

production of a quarterly Arts and Culture E-Magazine dedicated

to the evolution and growth of Caribbean Art.

We are now in the inception phase of planning and we would

like to gather some critical information from the public before

we go ahead. We have put together a short survey and would deeply

appreciate it if you take the time to go through it and give us your honest

feedback.

The information gathered from this, will prompt us on how to proceed

and move on with our conceptual ideas on how to bring this new venture

to life. Thank you.

Please find the survey here:

http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e30hoxqzgdnd5njp/start

Kindest Regards

doppelgänger

2010-09-02T10:09:00.005-04:00

this morning trails to the east side of

the porch, led my gaze to rest upon

the season's declining sapodilla clusters, brown,

sparse and turning the concrete a warm mahogany.

My ears hearing your voice as you called,

head rearing to your valiant direction. Eyes

unfocused for a confusing particle of a second,

while I realize again for what must be

the millionth time, that men in dark blue

dress shirts clinging to their skin in this dusky

humidity-

are only reminder that you are gone.

a gesture

2010-08-30T14:07:00.003-04:00

the genetics of a gesture

friday evening watching the sunset

after two years apart we have begun healing, mending

and have started the plans to spend the rest of our lives

with each other. It is not the custom for me to bare any

sort of words that move between our beings, but. I figure

promises and goals have accountability attached to them

intrinsically.

" it will be a struggle, we will have our difference boil towards

the surface and explode, we will have new parts of us extending

beyond our individual comprehension. We have a life together

ahead and I want us both to be fearless, compassionate, forgiving,

brutal, honest and forever questioning who we are individually

and collectively. Only then will we fully understand the potential

and greatness of our love together."

Wanderlust

2010-08-25T20:40:00.014-04:00

“Homesick, my desire

Crawled across snow

Like smoke, for its lost fire”- Derek Walcott

My bed is in the south-west corner of a small room, walls to

the north and south, on the north wall resides a clock in the shape

of a compass’s wind rose, long hand on eight, short hand between

one and two, much closer to one. It closely mimics the clock that hung in

my parents’ living room for years when I was a child. A golden crown

of thorns nailed into the concrete to its left, a cabinet to store my

papers and books, lined with several paintings that my New Jersey

surrogate family sawed up and placed inside for reinforcement.

I have collected a lot of books, more than I can read in a lifetime it seems.

To the bookcase’s right a seven-foot mirror with the words “To Repel Ghosts”

written across its top edge in black sharpie scrawl, leans against the east

bookcase ascending up to the ceiling, plastic filing cabinets line the floor all

around it. Six film canisters are collecting dust. To the right of the clutter,

a small separator whose cloth oscillates between being bright white and moldy

yellow, is sectioned off into long rectangular sheets that offer privacy. It is

always pulled once I am sectioned off and in hiding.

Never pulled on a sunny morning, I lie in bed and watch the yellow spurts

creep over my body up into my eyes, my pupil and iris dancing in tune with the

brightness. The quality of light in New York is different, something about it

jarring, rough and erudite. The south wall has a bell screwed into the wall, its

brass exterior rusty after I left it covered in salt water and vinegar for a few

days last year when I started to conceptualize bringing “The Antilles” back to

life. To its right a decoration of the North Star and a bouquet of small dried

Calle lilies that were sent to me by my lover when I left. She thought I

abandoned her; it has taken a long time for us to come to any sort of

repair; we are finding a new language to communicate with, and to ease

the distance.

There are two photographs of mine that hang opposing each other;

one of a field, fake flowers, a plastic bag and glistening magic shoes.

It is black and white and blurry. I took it with a Holga in October 2008 in

northwestern New Jersey. The other photograph is a diptych of my lover

lying on our bed, her hand touching the plywood of her father’s house

that is split up the middle. The pillow that her hand is resting on is white.

The rest of her body is naked and shrouded in darkness, in the left section

her nipples face me. They resemble warriors.

The top of the room is lined with three strings of white Christmas

lights; I turn them on when I want the room to feel cozier, when I want to

feel less alone. To the west a red piece of cloth hangs from a golden rod

with leaves to one end, an emblem to a sort of forgiveness after reading

Genesis (the beginning) a multitude of times growing up. Two smaller

mirrors occupy the space and are littered with business and exhibition

cards. Looking at them now I realize that I wasn’t aware that I was/am so

attached the memorabilia of art.

I frequent the DIA/Electronic Arts Intermix building for Artist’s talks and

screenings of video works in their small stuffy room that is stocked with

too many chairs if you are flying solo through Chelsea. I always do. I like

the way my feet hit the concrete, and it is the only day once a month when I

really walk and listen to my body and my mind. For hours regardless of the

weather on Thursdays or Saturdays I find refuge within the sectioned corridor.

The collected memorabilia is housed around my mirrors. The disorder is stacked

between the glass and the frames; Weems, Anatsui, Trecartin, Ahwesh, Jonas,

Ruby, Lin, Wool, Cardiff, and Wonjnarowicz. The streets pass me, 22nd, 23rd,

24th, never past 27th, always above 17th, the small section that I feel akin to

I share with a multitude. The spaces in between the excuses and pardons,

openand closing doors, the Half King and crossing streets blindly. I find

stillness in 7000 oaks.

It is hard to think that four feet basalt stone columns stand out

amidst all the concrete, they don’t. In spring the trees that the

columns are paired with come into bloom; Linden, Gingko, Bradford Pear,

Sycamore, Honey Locust, Pine Oak, Red Oak, Elm, and Sycamore. One morning

between the budding leaves and reproductive systems I drifted into and out of

their lines, moving into and out of their passage and presence. The conscious

and social construction of 7000 oaks is how I look at the urban space of

New York when I flutter around and try to make order of the chaos and the

concrete. I liken the city to a macrocosm of that small space created by Joseph

Beuys, where I am allowed to drift into and out of the way, taking in the beauty

but understanding the form, content and its metaphysical relationship to the

urban, metropolitan and global.

Rebecca Solnit states, “Walking shares with making and working that

crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of

knowing the world through the body and the body through the world...walking

is how the body measures itself against the earth, walking assuages or

legitimizes this alienation. All of my sparks and project ideas usually start when

I walk, when I explore old streets and give my mind time to shed its neuroses.

Blood vessels acting accordingly to shut out unwanted voices and fear, with my

body in motion, mental momentum stabilizes.

The Exquisite Landscape

2010-08-22T19:39:00.002-04:00

The exquisite landscape opens at the International

Center of Photography on the 10th of September, it will run

through January 2011.

My photographic and video work will be

featured in it.

a small plot

2010-08-17T11:43:00.004-04:00

I have taken a break from creating. There is too much

noise inside my head to focus and discipline myself.

I am finding some silence and introspection through

my budding garden.

I started planting about two months ago. The plot is

currently confined to a lettuce box as we have run out of

land to really grow plants that require constant care.

I shall have to think very soon about where they will

reside once I leave.

I will be scouring around for pots and a kind piece

of land to protect their buds, bugs, fresh produce

and spider webs. Below are some photographs

respectively of my avocado plant, spinach, basil

and a wicked kitty beating the heat. In about

15 years I hope I have a large avocado tree to hang

from.

sea grape

2010-08-13T18:26:00.002-04:00

My lover is a sea grape tree hanging weighted and endless on a

dusky shore bearing fruit once a year bitter and purple.

Reminding me constantly of death and the time that passes till

time ends.

x-ora

2010-08-11T08:48:00.002-04:00

I am trying my best to mend.

remnants: notes on waiting

2010-08-06T18:40:00.000-04:00

It was hard to see the street from the obstructed view of the

wroth iron that stretched in front of my face separating outside

from inside. I could smell the rust yards away and a story above,

its pungent brassy brown stuck in the inner side of nostrils, burning

when concentration was somewhere upon the horizon. Flakes blowing

in the air, inhaled and suctioned unto capillaries housed inside

my strained lung cavity.

A strewn pile of leaves lay still in the crevice built to keep the

gate's mechanics in place. One had to pull really hard for the

tracks to respond to the iron, water, dust and salt. It's trace hung

to my fingers all day regardless of soap, it seemed to have a magical

quality of rendering everything in its own likeness. Godlike.

Vacuous.

His chair sits like death in the corner. Torn and ragged, its center descending

to the floor, in a sorrow filled wilt. The bamboo frays; the delicate beginnings

and remains waver- its boundary insufficient. His piano covered by

inches of dust: derma, membrane, our scales stroking the atrophying wood,

its pedals stiff...wires broken.

No one inside knows how to play.

On mornings that were still we would sit and peer over each other.

The detritus that collided within the space kept us bound;

ram-shackled louvres, barren pots and pans, gradients that moved

from green to blue. Blue reflecting off the water. Water the

omnipotent and righteous.

1982 Net

2010-08-02T08:42:00.003-04:00

Constructed on our tank in 1982

Mosquito net in the room where we wrap ourselves into each other

force

2010-07-21T08:43:00.007-04:00

It feels forced-

the healing

the forgetting

the empty space

between then and now, the days that seem to

evaporate without essence, taste or smell.

I try to fill up the space around her, but

feel as though my body is detained and yoked to

the sensory memory of a being, that was once

erect, loud, above sea level.

out of sync

a poverty in my being

with the way she, bends, peels, chops, lays

and changes the remote dropping it against her

stomach, it tangling up between the sheet and her

skin in the hot hot heat. How I going to mention

that time will move fast and I will have to move

with it.

Like the violent breeze outside from the west , a faint whisper

of belonging. Now the smell of guilt fixes itself around my head

and nothing settles the around and around in the pit of

my stomach.

A sense of place

2010-07-07T18:02:00.003-04:00

I moved islands when I was born; I was placed in the belly of

Motor Vessel (M.V) Edwina and headed south. She was red and

long, white chairs lined her deck, putrid smoke exited her exhausts.

When I was fifteen, she was taken to the windward side of the

island and sunk. They welded holes in her hull and let the

bottom and stern touch sand. She stayed on Mt. Wynne’s black

shore for years becoming a haven to fauna until she was labeled

defunct, an eyesore. They took her out to sea and buried her

along one of the deepest crevices.

In the year of our Lord, 1985, five years after I was born, my father

put me on the counter of his first ship, M.V Pattree, which had a

map affixed to its surface. It was blue and white, its lines obscured

by the plastic sheeting laid over it to protect it from the elements,

it’s edges curled from the humidity. White turning yellow: faded,

crinkled and salty. The bridge affixed with the permanent scent of

diesel, rust and engine oil coursing over the cabin’s façade and

seeping into the very composition of the lacquered plywood and

hard vinyl changing its instruction, its nature.

We were out to sea, tossed between God’s billowing waves, back and

forth; into and out of the strange aqueous that was no longer sky

blue and placid, but angry, vociferous and unforgiving. It was dry

season because that was the only time my father would let her walls

protect us, some myth about the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone,

convection and wind pressure travelling west off the coast of Africa

aligning to make the conditions perfect. The converging tides pulling and

pushing us North, South, East and West, all at once.

This undertow ruptures the delicate history of the archipelago,

redistributing and corrupting its parts, the sea’s violence pronounced,

piercing and omnipresent. It consumed my ancestors in a gulp over

a century and a half ago, left them like beached whales stranded

on small topographic slippages. Barren and bare, they dispersed.

Journeyed to find homes that would occupy the abandoned cavity left by

the surge of the sea. Ravenous, they scoured lands putting roots down;

they occupied the periphery of expanding shores, of protected ports and

harbours and of elusive ground.

I am where I come from, nine degrees north of the Equator. I speak the

language of this place. The specificity of language is important to the

region; it is the way we come to know ourselves through the ritual of

an aural and spoken (oral) tradition. The function of memory within

these constructs becomes distorted, maze-like, an amalgamation

of the past’s past. Through synapses, chemistry collides with image,

sound, taste and touch; Iit is re-experienced as confusion, as

displacement. I try to locate myself within the time line of the region,

within the stories that spill from elder lips; always I am confronted

with a gap, a space that seems impossible to reconcile.

I attempt to reassemble, to put to order things that seem out of place.

It becomes an opportunity to confront memory, its disobedience,

half-truths and exaggerations. The fan appears, the fan of memory

that Walter Benjamin describes, the one that spirals out from its

circumference into forever. Along its rungs questions multiply and

truth evades. This spiral has no folds, no folds to lift up and push oneself

against, it is smooth, forever retreating into the beyond. The possibility of

dissection, of splitting the helix, its tangent line and angle becomes

treacherous.

Thus, it races past me, beyond my perception into that infinite space

where language becomes the fight. The fight is synonymous with my

relationship to reality. Pen to paper, in binary, within code, shrouded

within language, the fight manifests itself as fists and blows. Instead

of the world being knocked off its course, it is I who am dislodged.

Exiled. Through this controlled retreat into the past, I explore the

fragments of souls given voice again to reflect on territory, on the encircling

salt that courses through veins, and on the ever slowly travelling being

back and forth wondering and wandering within waves.

2:33

2010-06-30T20:47:00.004-04:00

Wheels contracting against smooth asphalt,

eyes crimson if my biology would allow

such an apt gesture. Instead my face

is stained tired, tear tracks like muddled

cursive. Making sense to those who consider

life and death.

Down a hill, around numerous corners filled with

jagged potholes the taxi man navigates to find the smooth

part of the cooling concrete. The harbor lies placid, calm and

far away, its belly cradled by stillness that can only be the starting

of rainy season. My spirit gathering energy is impatient for

that other dock.

for that still face nine miles south.

He sent the bare backed beauty for us, whose skin, ages past elastic

hung to his skeletal structure loose, wrinkled, the softest and harshest

shade of earth. Shouting periodically at the stars and diction to make

The Queen proud:

Juliette Eight Foxtrot.

Repeat

Channel 14

Kingfisher bound for Port Elizabeth

8 on board.

Words like fast, water and shift burst forth from his lips

cradled between obscenities only a seaman would be proud of.

Then that gentle oceania turned its inside out and lighted a path

for us clear through the base of the southern cross.

Unfathomable lights directed us home with glittering force.

Phosphorescence, an ever present aqueous glow draining the darkness of

its power. The water an ambassador for his wish and will. His life

force moving with tremendous crests.

He called for us, our feet moving slower than his heart.

Rounding the port's jagged corner, she stands lighted and empty. A deep

emptiness. If the earth could mutter she would beg for her son.

His chamber of hulls lay docked besides the long wharf. Its grey,

black tonight. I squint through salt and exhaustion. Here fast but not fast

enough. I feel cheated, and it provokes my sorrow and my sick

curiosity to bring him to the surface. To command my fathers

spirit and bones to ascend,

"Rise good man from the chamber, disregard its claims over who you were.

Rise good man and prolong that smile in my minds eye a little longer, the

one we all inherited, the one we share in our disbelief.

Rise good man so I will have someone to argue and complain with.

Rise good man so we can talk about god, war, history and the sea.

Rise good man so I can feel as though i can live again, fight again, do again.

Rise good man and take her pain away.

Rise good man and occupy the void.

this exists within an obsessive edit.

Don't keep this at all.

2010-06-16T11:36:00.003-04:00

surface tension and scrawlings.

2010

Town Issue #4

2010-06-14T09:08:00.005-04:00

June is rolling on. My work is being featured in

Issue #4 of Town. It is a literary publication and broadside appearing

at regular intervals online and in its physical manifestation

around Port of Spain, Trinidad and its surrounding suburbs.

In this issue works from my Compound series: Pedigree and

De Santos are being featured alongside five emerging poets

words.

http://www.cometotown.org

The broadside is also available for download and once

the photographs of the installations come to life i will share them.

Gratitude to Nicholas Laughlin and his team for selecting the

work and bringing it to life.

Blessings.

She Caribbean

2010-06-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

Some of my work has been featured in the quarterly

fashion and lifestyle magazine She Caribbean along

with a biography. As soon as I am able to locate a

copy, I will scan the pages and upload them here.

Big thank you's to Esther Lee, who spearheaded the

entire production.

Interiority Complex: A CCNY Conversations Series

2010-05-06T15:35:00.003-04:00

My short film "Portrait of a Landscape" has been

selected and will be screened as a part of the Camera

Club of New York Conversation Series.

CCNY is proud to present our second Conversation Series, with a one–night event featuring short films by eighteen artists at Motor City Bar.

Interiority Complex
Curated by Lindsey Castillo and Jesse Cesario
Sunday, May 16th, 7:30pm
Motor City Bar
127 Ludlow Street (between Rivington and Delancey)
Lower East Side, Manhattan
Free Admission

Interiority Complex provides avenues for introspection unique to the medium. The artist‘s ability to manipulate duration of the image and the accompanying audio stimuli present the viewer with a truer realization of the artist‘s personal perception. The films in this collection speak through shared cultural images. Here, nostalgia is invoked as a metaphor for the common experience. By intense, violent manipulation of pop icons, the artists included in Interiority Complex are making bold statements about the importance of self–awareness through perception, presented on video and Super–8 film.

Featuring:
Joseph Bennett
Holly Bynoe
Lindsey Castillo
Kenny Curwood
Ryan Foerster
Fryd Fryendahl
Rebecca Gaffney
Peter Garfield
Lorrenzo Gattorna
Harry Gregory
Michael Intile
Britt King & Emma Chammah
Tuomas Korpijaakko
Wayne Liu
Danillo Parra
Marshall Rendina
Jennifer Ruff
Joshua Sanchez
Jerry Vezzuso
Bernard Yenelouis

Special Thanks to Francesca Romeo for the generous use of Motor City Bar.