She works at the intersection of biography and history, focusing on post-plantation economies by engaging with a particular landscape on Barbados.
Joscelyn Gardner: Speaking the Unspeakable
On the occasion of the the solo exhibition White Skin, Black Kin: “Speaking the Unspeakable”, curated by Joscelyn Gardner and Denyse Menard-Greenidge, an Intervention into four galleries at the Barbados Museum, Barbados
A Visual Essay – Art Building Community
How do we consider the value of visual culture within a given context and how do creatives meaningfully engage with collective space and a common audience? What is our relationship to the commons and how might the public engage with aesthetic interventions?
Signs of the Times
Discarded traffic signs procured from Barbados’ Ministry of Transport and Works, have been painted on and placed in rural environments with young men and women – migrant workers from Guyana. This suite of digital photographs proposes a link between road signs giving information to road users and to control the flow of vehicular traffic and the role of the state in controlling the flow of intra-Caribbean human traffic. There is an element of the ridiculous and absurd evident in the act of placing these signs in contexts with migrant agricultural and domestic workers who provide essential labour.
The Work of Jasmine Thomas-Girvan seen through the lens of Magical Realism
On May 25th Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins of ARC magazine in collaboration with Medulla Art Gallery presented a panel of five women who were invited to speak about Jasmine Thomas-Girvan’s work. The panel included Melanie Archer, editor of Robert & Christopher Publishers and art director of the trinidad+tobago film festival; Gabrielle Hezekiah, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at UWI, St. Augustine; Sharon Millar, Trinidadian writer; Marsha Pearce, scholar, artist and PhD candidate at UWI, St. Augustine and myself. We were asked to respond to the December 2011 solo exhibition at the Y Gallery – ‘Gardening in the Tropics’ by Jasmine Thomas-Girvan – Trinidadian based, Jamaican metal smith and sculptor.
Has the Plantation Complex Fallen?
This paper was written for an audio-visual presentation delivered at the Society for Caribbean Studies annual conference (2011) which took place at the Liverpool Slavery Museum in the UK. I chose to respond to one of the conference panels which was titled, The Fall of the Plantation Complex and draw a thread to my own work to ask if the plantation complex has indeed fallen
The Perception of the Plural in a Unique Space (2010)
“An approach to the work of the Barbadian artist Annalee Davis cannot be done without a fragmentary, plural perspective, attending to characteristics of its own creative mission that identify with multiple and complex interpretations and approaches to the variants in Caribbean contemporary art. Her work cannot be restricted to a defined esthetic or technical expression, given the variety of approaches and ways of doing what fundamentally characterize the work of this artist.”
by Maria Prada Naida (translated by Margaret Ann Harris)
Relationship home / land in the discourse of identity and self-image (2010)
“Whether in recordings, installations, or painted panels with objects attached, Annalee Davis exposes the interesting relationship home /land ; that is, the term casa, home, and that of homeland, patria. It is a partnership and discourse on identity and self-image that the individual creates of our contexts. This, with the clear aim of making us think.”
by Alena Méndez Moreno (translated by Margaret Ann Harris)
Show me your status
Show me your status presents a recording of a woman from St. Vincent who recounts her experience of being approached on a mini bus by three immigration officials and one police officer and of being publicly humiliated by being asked to show her status.
Public Beach Access
Caution!!
In 2009, I developed a project using an abolitionist poster from 1851. The broadside was originally posted in the streets as a warning to the Coloured People of Boston and was in opposition to the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 that was a threat to all African Americans. The law required citizens to help catch runaways and warned that those who aided a fugitive could be fined or imprisoned. An interracial group formed the Boston Committee of Vigilance and issued the poster to alert free African-Americans to the presence of Policemen who were acting as Slave Catchers and Kidnappers.
Colonial Blackness
Professor of History at Rutgers University, Herman Bennett, selected this relief print, Putting on My Blackness, 1987, for the cover of his book, Colonial Blackness - A History of Afro-Mexico, published by Indiana University Press, 2009.
Hatchlings – A Requiem
Hatchlings - A Requiem, situates the fifteen member countries as insular national states, lying on a bed of the shredded Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Thoughts on Prime Minister Thompson’s New “Amnesty”
In the Diaspora is one of a series of fortnightly columns for the Stabroek newspaper from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean. This article is a response to Prime Minister David Thompson’s new government policies determined by the Subcommittee on Immigration established in June 2008. The Thompson administration came into power in part on an anti-immigration platform.
Sarah Clunis on Annalee Davis
“The result is a series of hybrid juxtapositions of objects that examine the relationship between past and present issues of land use.”
By Sarah Clunis
Caribbean Journeys
Caribbean Journeys is an ethnographic analysis of the cultural meaning of migration and home in three families of West Indian background that are now dispersed throughout the Caribbean, North America, and Great Britain. Moving migration studies beyond its current focus on sending and receiving societies, Karen Fog Olwig makes migratory family networks the locus of her analysis. For the people whose lives she traces, being “Caribbean” is not necessarily rooted in ongoing visits to their countries of origin, or in ethnic communities in the receiving countries, but rather in family narratives and the maintenance of family networks across vast geographical expanses.
Sweet Island Cookie Cutters – Sweet Fuh So!
In 2007, Sweet Island Cookie Cutters – Sweet Fuh So! was commissioned for Happy Island – Encuentro Bienal Contemporaneo Di Caribe in Aruba, curated by Jose Manuel Noceda. Later, in 2012 – 2013 it was included in the Caribbean: Crossroads of the World exhibition and displayed at El Museo del Barrio, curated by Elvis Fuentes. In 2014, it was included in a revised version of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), curated by Elvis Fuentes and Tobias Ostrander.
Just beyond My Imagination
The title of this work is adapted from the Barbados Board of Tourism’s marketing slogan “BARBADOS – Just Beyond Your Imagination”. Having hosted the Golf World Cup Championships in December 2006, complete with international ESPN coverage, the small island developing state of Barbados (21 x 14 miles) saw the island transforming into an international golfing center.
On the Map
On The Map debunks the myth of a unified, “laid back” Caribbean culture and contrasts images of beach, golf course and paradise, with the reality of Caribbean living, victimization and abuse. Un/documented Guyanese migrants tell of their migrant experience into Barbados, exposing how Caribbean people treat Caribbean people as “other”. The film speaks out to create awareness of critical issues to improve the human condition, allowing us to co-exist respectfully.
What Matters
What Matters functions as an enquiry into how we might measure the value of non-physical matter or resources which have intrinsic value, in addition to exploring notions of balance and harmony. The work was inspired after a walk through Dharavi, one of the largest slums in Asia, situated in Mumbai. The scale of deprivation combined with an ability to contain chaos, conjured up ideas of misery, grace, privation, materialism and balance.
Barbados in a Nutshell
Barbados in a Nutshell is a satirical cross-section of a small-island state rapidly shifting from an economy based on agriculture to a tourist destination. The piece presents a souvenir display of ways in which we have been mapped from the seventeenth century until now. In the past we were mapped by others and for others. Now we map ourselves for others. Consequently we find it difficult to locate ourselves. Where do we find the map we so desperately need. Like a syringe inserted into the island’s history, Barbados in a Nutshell displays the innards of the coral island.