Listed below are excerpts from “In Dialog with Bitter Grass: Creating Caribbean Connections” an interview by Hannah Ok. Grimmer for C& América Latina.
Bitter Grass is an company created by Annalee Davis and Holly Bynoe Younger with the goal of enhancing the visibility of up to date practitioners by way of processes of cross-pollination and collaboration. This yr they open their third exhibition in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam.
C& América Latina: When and the place did you two meet? The place are you primarily based?
Bitter Grass: We met in 2011 when Annalee was inaugurating her artist-led initiative out of her studio, Contemporary Milk, in Barbados, that included the launch of the third difficulty of ARC Journal of which Holly was the co-founder and co-editor. We’re at the moment primarily based in Barbados (Annalee) and between Scotland and Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (Holly).
C&AL: In what context did you resolve to create an company centered on Caribbean and Diaspora artists?
SG: Over the previous 12 years, we have now collaborated as Contemporary Milk and ARC. These included Caribbean Linked– an Aruba-based residency hosted by Ateliers ‘89 that helps the creation of labor by rising artists from all linguistic territories within the Caribbean, and Tilting Axis–an annual assembly that explores the cultivation of a more healthy cultural ecosystem for the visible arts within the area. Bitter Grass grew out of those efforts as an much more intimate consideration premised on slower cultural work by way of multi-year transnational partnerships. We needed to contribute to the enlargement of Caribbean artwork communities, whereas reflecting on the specifics of this specific geopolitical context. We additionally felt able to broaden our work with cultural establishments that share related rules.
C&AL: What’s your notion of the cultural and inventive sector within the Caribbean?
SG: The Caribbean is a various area that’s known as the West Indies, the Larger Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands. Colonized by the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch, our creolized area has been impacted by the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the aftermath of the colonial challenge, whereas struggling as one of the indebted locations on the earth, depending on the fickleness of the tourism sector.
Our perceptions of the humanities are formed by the lens of this historical past and by our perspective from the International South. Just some Caribbean nations have museums and artwork galleries, and the sector is experiencing excessive ranges of emigration. Artists and artist-led initiatives are forward of state companies that battle to know the worth of the cultural sector exterior of fashions such because the so-called Orange Economic system (Artistic Economic system), which search return on funding whereas ignoring the necessity to put money into artists.
We’re additionally conscious of the affect of the Caribbean on the diaspora and its affect within the north. The Windrush technology, for instance, has formed post-imperial Britain. Notions of the plantation scene are debated in relation to local weather collapse, whereas thinkers comparable to Édouard Glissant and Antonio Benítez-Rojo have change into dominant references for curators working globally. The 2021 São Paulo Biennial was impressed by Glissant’s idea of relation, whereas the 2023 Sharjah Biennial, influenced by Okwui Enwezor, explores processes of creolization, hybridization and decolonization – notions that the area has been articulating internally for many years. The Caribbean is increasing.
C&AL: How do you understand range inside the arts?
SG: The Caribbean has all the time been a syncretic and hybridized area. The notion of range is a core concern in visible arts and has wider implications for illustration. Some facets of how range is represented within the arts are influenced by nation-building, Blackness, feminism and gender identities.
The Caribbean is a polyphonic area however our information of one another stays susceptible to the orchestration of the geopolitics of Empire and colonialism. Variety is implicit within the linguistics and indigeneity of the area and within the intergenerational transmission of data. [. . .]
To learn full interview, go to https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/editorial/sour-grass-creating-caribbean-connections/
For extra data go to:
sour-grass.com
annaleedavis.com
hollybynoe.com
Hannah Ok. Grimmer is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Research. She researches the connection between visible arts, social actions, and reminiscence activism.