Frances Gallardo (Puerto Rico)
Frances Gallardo‘s work incorporates the medium of paper and its infinite uses in the creation of art. She works it majestically into forms of hurricanes, landscapes and buildings; all worked with detail and perfection. Since childhood, Frances has been fascinated with atmospheric events such as hurricanes and even though the chaos they cause, she sees beautiful forms, musical compositions, colors and movement. In her first solo show in Puerto Rico, Meteoro; she focused on the beauty of these systems presented in big paper pieces with an embroidery look resembling a knitting technique called Mundillo, a craft of handmade bobbin lace cultivated and honored in Puerto Rico.
Travis Geertruida (Curacao)
Born and raised on the island of Curaçao, Travis Geertruida is heavily influenced by the island and everything surrounding him there. Working within a broad variety of media and disciplines, Travis challenges stereotypes of gender, family and status in our culture and simultaneously challenges the viewer to acknowledge where and when they might identify with these issues.
After finishing high school Travis went on to study engineering at the the University of Curaçao before changing his major and going on to follow his true passion of studying visual arts. This brought him to the Instituto Buena Bista (IBB) “The Curacao Center for Contemporary Art” in Curaçao. At the IBB Travis has worked alongside several renowned international artists, that have greatly contributed to the development of his artistic practice and have expanded his vision on the role of art in society. Travis has been developing his work ever since under the guidance of artists David Bade and Tirzo Martha, preparing himself for a continuation at an art academy in the Netherlands.
Charlie Godet Thomas (Bermuda)
Charlie Godet Thomas (b.1985) lives and works in London, UK. Having studied a BA in Fine Art (Sculpture) at Manchester School of Art in 2009, he graduated with an MA in Fine Art (Sculpture) from the Royal College of Art, London in 2014 where he was awarded the Bermuda Arts Council Scholarship and the Peter Leitner Scholarship. Charlie’s work often explores the way in which strategies for writing can be adopted and implemented as strategies for other forms of creative activity. He is currently traveling to Bermuda where he is taking part in the Bermuda Biennial.
Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Torschlusspanik’, VITRINE, London (2016), ‘To Be Is To Do, To Do Is To Be, Do Be Do Be Do’, The Telfer Gallery, Glasgow (2015), ‘In Comes the Good Air, Out Goes the Bad Air, In Comes the Good Air’, Cactus, Liverpool (2015) and ‘A Method for Writing/A Method for Making’, BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK (2014). Group exhibitions include: ‘Incunabula’, Norwich Cathedral Library (2015), ‘An evanescent fix’, VITRINE (2015); ‘Bending Light’, HOME-Platform Bristol, UK (2014); and ‘END’, Cactus, UK (2014). He was included in DAZED’s ‘Artists we’re watching out for in 2015’ list. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Bermuda National Gallery. Charlie is represented by VITRINE, London / Basel.
Nowé Harris-Smith (Bahamas)
Nowé H. Harris-Smith was born in Nassau, New Providence. She began drawing at the age of ten and has continued this practice ever since. Nowé is currently majoring in Art Education at the College of The Bahamas and simultaneously participates in various exhibitions including The National Arts Festival Open Category (2012), “Retort” at The Public Treasury (2013), “SUP” (2014) at The College of The Bahamas, “At Random” Popop Studios (2014), Transforming Spaces Pop-up Studios (2015), and “DIRT” (2016) at The College of The Bahamas.
Dominique Hunter (Guyana)
Dominique Hunter‘s work often takes the form of collage’s where the result of simultaneously reinforcing and dismantling stereotypes about the black female body leads to a physical embodiment of issues around sexuality, commodification, exploitation, and (non) representation in art historical texts and imageries.
Hunter was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1987. She received her Diploma from the Burrowes School Of Art in 2007 and was awarded Best Graduating Student. Shortly thereafter, Hunter won the silver and bronze medals in Castellani House’s 7th and 8th Biennial National Drawing Competition. Her first solo exhibition titled Introspection was held at the National Gallery of Art, Castellani House in 2010. In 2014 she was awarded second place with a silver medal at the Guyana Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition.
Hunter recently completed her BFA at the Barbados Community College as well as an internship at the Fresh Milk Barbados art platform where she worked under the guidance of the establishment’s director, Annalee Davis. Hunter is currently the Sunday Arts columnist for the Guyana Chronicle newspaper.
Tessa Mars (Haiti)
Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist living and working in Port-au-Prince. She completed a bachelor in Visual Arts in France, at Rennes 2 University in 2006 and upon her return to Haiti the same year she started working as a Cultural projects coordinator at Fondation AfricAméricA. She had her first exhibit in 2009 at the Georges Liautaud Museum in Port-au-Prince and since then her work as been shown in Canada, France, Italy and the United-States. Since 2013 Tessa Mars has been solely focused on developing her career as an artist. Her recent work questions the role of history, customs and beliefs in the construction of the individual’s identity.
Oneika Russell (Jamaica)
Oneika Russell attended the Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica. from 1999 to 2003 where she completed a diploma in the Painting Department. In 2003 she left for studies at Goldsmiths College in London in the Centre for Cultural Studies. While at Goldsmiths, Oneika began to integrate her deep interest in combining the practice of Painting with New Media. She has also completed the Doctoral Course in Art at Kyoto Seika University, Japan concentrating on Animation in Contemporary Art. She is currently a lecturer across The Fine Art and Visual Communication Departments at The Edna Manley College.
Shanice Smith (Trinidad)
Shanice Smith was born in 1991 in Trinidad. She has received two certificates from The University of the West Indies in Social work and Psychology (UWI) before going on to pursue a Bachelor’s in Fine Art, also at UWI.
Her work investigates how messages are conveyed in the public domain which is done by video and performance pieces. Shanice is concerned with female exploitation and objectification as well as expressing a keen interest in children’s issues. Her most recent exhibition was staged at the National Museum and Art Gallery of Trinidad and Tobago as part of her final year thesis. Smith’s work thus far has taken the form of mainly video installations and mixed media.
Simon Tatum (Cayman Islands)
As a young man from the Cayman Islands, Simon Tatum‘s artwork focuses on the personal exploration of his people and the important elements of their history, such as migration, maritime culture, slavery, segregation and religion. Recent projects revisit historical texts and photographs which speak on the early colonization of the Cayman Islands and the creation of the Caymanian people through the last several hundred years of the islands’ social politics. Many of the historical materials which Simon uses were introduced to him through the collections of the Cayman National Archive. Moreover, he finds the materials in the Archive’s collection to be a source of buried truth, indicating and supporting towards the racial dignity and cultural values of the Caymanian people.
Simon Tatum was born on Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands in 1995. He was raised both on and off his home island while receiving his primary and secondary education. During Simon’s childhood years he established a strong interest for history, literature, social studies, religion, and art. These interests led Simon to pursue a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He often travels back and forth to the Caribbean for new sources of inspiration for his work. Currently, Simon is in the third year of his Bachelor’s degree and resides part of the year in Missouri.
Laura de Vogel (Aruba)
Laura de Vogel was born in 1990 in Dordrecht and raised in Aruba. After living on the island for more than 12 years, she decided upon continuing her studies in the Netherlands in 2008. Graduating as a graphic designer in 2011, Laura pursued her studies in Fine Arts to develop herself and her ambitions further as an autonomous artist. Currently Laura is setting up her work for the Graduation show at ArtEZ in Arnhem that opens the 29th of June!
By regularly traveling back and forth between Aruba and the Netherlands, she is able to touch base with the environment she feels an immense connection to with regards to the atmosphere and mentality. Interdisciplinary collaboration is a core pillar of Laura’s artistic practice.
Laura participated in various international exhibitions, workshops at Ateliers ‘89 and also set up her own projects on the island. One of the projects initiated was an independent artist-made event called “Ban Hunga Den Mondi” which took place on December of 2013. Ban Hunga Den Mondi functioned as a platform for visual art, performance, music and artistic expression. Creating space for creatives and local artists to come together in a rural environment and bringing these artistic developments out to the local public. This initiative was setup with co-creator and fellow artist Natusha Croes. The core organization consisting of artists: Jess Wolff, Germille Geerman, Armando Goedgedrag and Claude de Cuba and many voluntary helpers and sponsors made this event possible.
Critics
David Knight Jr.
David Knight Jr. is a writer, editor and journalist from the U.S. Virgin Islands. His articles have appeared in publications including Arc Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, Caribbean Beat Magazine, and The Caribbean Review of Books. He is the cofounder and coeditor of Moko Magazine, a regional arts and literature journal based in the British and U.S. Virgin Islands. He is currently based on St. Thomas where he works as a reporter and photographer for the Virgin Islands Source and as an exhibit cocurator with The Gri Gri Project, formerly PHR Art Projects.
Humberto Díaz
The work of Humberto Díaz (Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1975) has become known as some of the most original art in the Cuban contemporary scene. Active since the early 2000s, Díaz has participated in numerous exhibitions in and outside of Cuba, including the Havana Biennial.
The site specific works, performances and installations of Humberto Díaz range from micro interventions to highly ambitious environments that are visually and spatially impacting. Díaz is interested in creating a tense relationship between spectator/public and object/environment. He graduated from the ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte) in 2002 and has exhibited widely in Europe.
María Elena Ortiz
María Elena Ortiz is Assistant Curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where she curated At the Crossroads: Critical Film and Video from the Caribbean (2014) and the upcoming exhibition, Firelei Báez (2015). Previously, she worked as the Curator of Contemporary Arts at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, where she organized several projects including Carlos Motta, The Shape of Freedom and Rita Ponce de León: David. Ortiz has also collaborated with institutions such as New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Teorética, San Jose, Costa Rica; the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; and Tate Modern, London. In 2012, she curated Wherever You Roam at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach. Ortiz has contributed to writing platforms such as Fluent Collaborative, Curating Now, and Dawire. She has a Masters in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts (2010). In 2014, she was the recipient of the The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) and Independent Curators International (ICI) Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. As part of this research, Ortiz will be presenting an upcoming screening program titled, Video Islands, at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
Pablo León de la Barra
Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator, researcher, editor and blogger, and holds a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He is currently the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for Latin America at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He has curated, among other exhibitions, To Be Political it Has to Look Nice (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; PR04 Biennale (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; George and Dragon at ICA (2005) at the ICA London; This Is Not America (2009) at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere (2010) at the CCE in Guatemala; Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere (2011) at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way (2011, co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez) at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro; and MicroclimaS(2012) at Kunsthalle Zurich. León de la Barra has written for publications including Spike (Austria),Wallpaper (London), Celeste (Mexico), Ramona (Buenos Aires), and Metropolis M (Amsterdam). He has participated in numerous international symposiums and conferences and is editor of his blog Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution.
Caribbean Linked 