“alter natives…the illegitimate children of the nation who by virtue of differing race, class, gender or sexual variables find themselves on the wrong side of nation stories in opposition to the majority groups that assert ownership of the national or Caribbean space.”
– Annie Paul¹

“If we can understand something more of the complicated, unique, and multiple histories surrounding the “learning of looking” in the region, we could develop more in-depth analyses of artists working in the Caribbean and the complex visual grammars they work through and against.”
– Krista Thompson²

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Introduction

Current visual narratives around contemporary art, culture and life from the Caribbean seem to be dominated by a stagnant agenda of identity. Identity that often has been pre-determined, constructed, re-appropriated and adapted, with investigation into the relationships between national, archipelagic and diasporic Caribbean identities, and who has the right to claim them. Translating this agenda into accessible artistic communication, one outcome has been the ghettoizing of contemporary art from the Caribbean for exhibitions outside of the region. This is evident in the Infinite Island exhibition of 2007 and the Caribbean: Crossroads of the World exhibition of 2012, both of which were running in the United States of America only, and, as reviewer Emily Colucci stated of the latter: “seemed to fall into the same trap many identity or location-based exhibitions do — by attempting to show every single work that could fit into the exhibition space without a thought to how they might translate to the viewer.”³

With that example, using a framework of disconnected over-representation can be problematic as it assumes a collective pre-definition of contemporary Caribbean visual language that is only relevant in a context of its monocultural ‘Caribbeanness’.⁴ That is, the requirements to be ‘Caribbean’ are implied to exist naturally, negating any human input to defining its characteristics, resulting in artists, works and cultural practices being either included or excluded from a Caribbean contingency, with little flexibility on the ‘Caribbeanness’ identifier itself. There have been attempts to interrogate these constructions, such as Lawrence Durrell, who reflected on the Barbadian experience, stating “we live lives based on selected fictions and our view of reality is conditioned by our position in time and space – not by our personalities as we like to think.”⁵ But the dominant artistic landscape through regional and diasporic cultural institutions seems to favour images that reflect this ‘Caribbeanness.’

Artist-led platforms, however, engage in a diverse sense of creative practice from the Caribbean, and heavily rely on virtual platforms to facilitate visibility for diverse creative representations, arguably providing a safe space for artists to explore visibility of a new and diverse ‘Caribbeanness’. This essay proposes to highlight a group of these young contemporary artists, whose sense of being what Annie Paul referred to as “alter natives” manifests in new navigations of Caribbean visual language. It also suggests that for this visibility to be sustainable, the discursive frame of mind that works in the mode of identity must be dismantled. Instead, an attitude of engagement with a Caribbean existence as a creative ecology should be fostered, a constant network of diversity and archipelagic connections. In order to develop what Krista Thompson coined our “learning of looking”. To illustrate how this is being facilitated with positive implications, the work of these four contemporary Caribbean artists (who can be for the sake of this essay can be grouped as part of a theoretical ‘alter natives’ community), their connection to digital art mediums, and the role of virtual meeting spaces will be examined in terms of fostering creative and collaborative processes beyond the confines of national island boundaries, both geographical and ideological.

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[Visual] [Art] Language

Similar to the decolonization of Caribbean cultural experiences, as seen in the works of Sylvia Winter for instance, any attempt to truly express diversity and transcend definition in contemporary Caribbean art involves breaking away from the linear framework of art history. Wynter has been explicit about the nature of viewing the postcolonial self, by stating there was a “gap that exists between our present ‘mental construction of reality’ as one projected from the perspective (and to the adaptive advantage) of our present ethnoclass genre of the human Man, and its biocentric descriptive statement and the way our global social reality veridically is out there; that is, outside the viewpoint of ethnoclass Man-of its genre of being, of truth of freedom-as all three are articulated in the disciplines of our present epistemological order and its biocentric disciplinary discourses.”⁶ It could be argued that by labeling a group of artists under Paul’s term ‘alter natives’, this is assuming a collective manifesto and therefore complying with art historical narratives by slotting these artists into an art movement in a specific timeframe (such as The Impressionists, Dadaism, and so on). However, when the term ‘alter native’ is unpacked (and even the motion itself of unpacking the term) it becomes feasible that the art historical language is actually being used to liberate contemporary Caribbean art from the constraints imposed on it. When Jamaican writer and critic Annie Paul coined ‘alter natives’, she was speaking of artists in the 2011 Wrestling with the Image exhibition whose curatorial framework was to resist typical Caribbean artistic imagery. If we take visual language as referring to the way collective cultural ideas are communicated through visual art, expanding on the notion that communication cannot lie in speech alone,⁷ then her play on the term alternative arguably aims to emphasize how visual language and the people creating it in the Caribbean could not conform to traditional modes of representation.

The term creative ecology in this essay is appropriated to a cultural sense. In the natural sciences, an ecology involves the structural way organisms interact with each other in order to generate sustainable living patterns.⁸ The same way life is sustained and inter-dependant in an environmental ecology and yet adapting to shifts, culture is arguably sustained and inter-dependant and equally as flexible in our society. In the Caribbean, the connected nature of informal art spaces, are already reflecting this notion of a creative ecology. For example, the network of Alice Yard – Granderson Lab – See You on Sundays initiatives in Trinidad and Tobago. Alice Yard was founded in 2006 by three local creatives,⁹ and over the course of 9 years has provided residencies for local and international artists, community art projects, and a consistent platform for artistic connections across the archipelago and diaspora. This is both in the physical space of Woodbrook in Trinidad, and the virtual space of their web presence.¹⁰ In 2015, the Alice Yard team, to provide rent-free working space for emerging artists in the area, founded the community studio space Granderson Lab. The virtual visibility of work produced in Granderson Lab via digital platforms and social media, allowed for artists creating in that space to network within and beyond the creative community. For instance, the critical exchange group See You on Sundays¹¹ (SYOS) invited Granderson Lab artist Alex Kelly to participate in an open critique. This critique was documented and shared on the SYoS website and social media, and creative people attached to the initiative, which was then re-shared on the virtual platforms of Alice Yard, Caribbean Linked,¹² and other artists attached to community, generating a sustainable ecology of creative visibility and support. This has contributed to Alex Kelly being offered a residency at The Fresh Milk Arts Platform Inc.,¹³ in Barbados, broadening the network and extending the structure of the ecology regionally.

The ideas in this essay build and transcend previous critical cultural theory on Caribbean identity, whilst drawing from discourse on facilitated networks of lateral knowledge exchange, a concept in contemporary educational theory. Post-colonialists such as Rex Nettleford and M.G. Smith wrote about the complexities of defining creolized Caribbean heritage for modern identities, with Smith’s well known statement in 1961 that “The West-Indian bred White is not culturally European, nor is the West-Indian bred black culturally African.”¹⁴ Edouard Glissant pioneered an archipelagic mindset, in that islands are culturally connected despite diverse heritages.¹⁵ Stuart Hall brought another layer to the Caribbean identity conversation through the “diasporic aesthetic”.¹⁶ Kamau Braithwaite re-focused the value of non-European models of poetics in arts the region. And Krista Thompson is a key figure in dissecting colonial and contemporary images of the Caribbean picturesque.¹⁷ Building on these thoughts, a line of inquiry beyond “Caribbeaness” is arguably necessary to widen the platform for cultural discourse in the region and diaspora. One trajectory for this broadening is to draw on malleable frameworks of ecological networks of knowledge exchange, a concept being implemented most notably in New Zealand education.¹⁸ The theory promotes knowledge exchange as a community collective process, with equal agency between child, family, teachers, physical and virtual environments. Each component contributes equally to the design of the process. Similarly, this essay argues that instead of adhering to an imposed ‘Caribbeannes’, the design of how the Caribbean self is interpreted and expressed requires constantly regenerating diverse contributions from a range of sources in equal measure.

Though there is limited research on the full extent digital art mediums have impacted the accessibility in creating and exhibiting art globally for artists in the Caribbean, there is already practical evidence of how this has been valuable in the flexibility of content for work and in the way islands creatively exchange with each other. Organizations that were founded to make visible new artistic narratives of the Caribbean such as ARC Magazine,¹⁹ the Fresh Milk Arts Platform, NLS Kingston,²⁰ Ateliers ‘89,²¹ and Alice Yard (to touch on a few) have strong online presences which allow them to knowledge-share and virtually collaborate on a consistent basis. The digital spaces also allow for artists working in the region to create their own modes of visibility and exchange, with blogs, websites, social media and so on. As Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier stated: “The digital world so far has no overly determined and owned history in the field of representation, so these artists are not burdened by the baggage of, for example, the history of painting or the status of the black body within the frame or field of representation.”http://www.artzpub.com/sites/default/files/pdf/wwtil.pdf (last accessed 25 July 2015).'>²²

The navigation of the creative digital sphere by the artists highlighted can be seen via two main interrogations: the negating preconceptions of ‘Caribbeannes’ and the creation of new connections through collaboration. These four examples of Paul’s ‘alter natives’, are through their work arguably communicating a malleable sense of cultural existence and self-reflection, a state of continuous inquiry. It could be suggested that this inquiry puts the artists at risk of losing relevancy to local audiences, as has been the risk for the Caribbean arts platforms that rely on digital web presences and virtual content. However, by exploring and re-exploring their environment, creating, dismantling and re-creating layers of the contemporary Caribbean, rather than striving to fit in or be strongly opposed to a constructed Caribbean identity, they are transcending the boundaries of creative practice in the region. And this, which until any research in the Caribbean region is conducted on the full extent of its implications, suggests contribution to a more inclusive Caribbean experience that values diversity.

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Negating Preconceptions

Popular imagery in the Caribbean has relied on certain preconceptions around the landscape and population, centered on the picturesque. A traditionally picturesque artistic style is associated with paintings depicting nature and landscapes as the subject. It is viewed in art historical terms as a branch of the eighteenth century sublime genre of landscape painting, where scenes were artistically modified to create more drama or serenity.²³ This is certainly relevant in the context of visual representation of the Caribbean. During the period of colonization, imagery of the Caribbean landscape as inviting, gentle, passive was extensively produced. The stigma of this somewhat touristic agenda is still prominent today in the slew of colourful and brightly exotic paradise imagery through what is projected as ‘fine Caribbean art’. Celebrated art in contemporary Barbados for instance gains vastly more visibility and commercial value when adhering to the principles of the idyllic landscape and presentation of quaint primitivism. The galleries across the island promote this agenda, feeding the monocultural cycle of what is produced and consumed.²⁴

Barbadian artist Versia Harris (b.1991) is one of the ‘alter natives’ who negates the need to adhere to the picturesque. This is evident in her animation work, for instance Untitled (2013), a product of her residency at the Barbadian arts platform Fresh Milk.

This work depicts a characters immersed in a landscape, layers of mutely coloured vegetation almost camouflaging the figure. The abstracted face of the character itself resembles a flower, expressing a visual connection between person and environment. Wearing a white smock and lace up black boots, the foliage-faced figure is repeated in different areas of a landscape backdrop, at one point ‘looking’ at itself, in other areas, facing the viewer.

Through this visual narrative, Harris is exploring the influence of our surroundings on our psyche. The often conflicted exchange between characters and their circumstances opens up universally relevant themes such as media fueled desires, disconnection from reality, and indulging in curiosity. Harris rejects using bright colours in these images of mass foliage, and the sharp lines of brushwork interjected with pixilated shapes negate a norm of soft inviting tones for Caribbean art.

When discussing her work in a video conference in 2014, Harris expressed how she drew inspiration for the visuals of her animated landscapes from what she saw around her in Barbados. However, she explained that she deliberately did not include any palm tree imagery in her works, as she did not want them to be placed as ‘Caribbean’. It is a conscious resistance, an awareness that the stigma of Caribbean landscape imagery would mean that the work would become less an individual form of creative communication between Harris and the viewer. An unconscious switch in the mind of the viewer from consumption of previous tropical imagery could arguably mean they would not be able to help but interpret the piece through a ‘Caribbean context’. This concept is emphasized by Krista Thompson in her explanation of Tropicalized imaging:

“Tropicalization here describes the complex visual systems through which the islands were imaged for tourist consumption and the social and political implications of these representations on actual physical space on the islands and their inhabitants. More specifically, tropicalization delineates how certain ideals and expectations of the tropics informed the creation of place-images in some Anglophone Caribbean islands. It characterizes how, despite the geological diversity within ‘the tropics’ and even in a single Caribbean island, a very particular concept of what a tropical Caribbean island should look like developed in the visual economies of tourism.”²⁵

Harris distances herself from discourse around ‘Caribbean identity’ that is vulnerable to tropical consumption in her work and focusing on communicating her individual artistic narrative.

The negation of tropicalization is also evident in the multi-media installation of another ‘alter native’ Jamaican artist Olivia McGilchrist’s (b. 1981) Sudden White. One still, entitled “Red Dress 1” at first glance could pass for a tourist snapshot, or even an advertisement. A white female is viewed from behind, staring out into an idyllically blue horizon before her.

In a traditional perception of Caribbean identity, the woman in this image would be a figure of an ‘other’, someone consuming of yet foreign to Caribbean (mono)culture. However, McGilchrist in this image is not a stranger, but her character ‘Whitey’, a Jamaican-born, re-assessing her connection to the landscape. Several similar images of ‘Whitey’ immersed in icons of Jamaican landscape such as a sugar cane field and the shoreline are presented in the installation juxtaposed against a video piece of a black Jamaican man dancing, superimposed on scene from the island called ‘Lovers Leap’. He signifies everything stereotypically expected from a Jamaican identity – Afro-Caribbean in complexion with dreadlocks, moving to dancehall music. The projected translucency of his figure against various images of landscape insinuates they are one and the same. In contrast, ‘Whitey’s’ figure is solid and separate, clearly encountering the elements of the environment. The title Sudden White also suggests that the starkness of her complexion and its implications for belonging in Jamaica was something that ‘Whitey’ was not inherently aware of, but made to become aware of abruptly by external perceptions of her.

 

‘Whitey’ as a visual character comprises of McGilchrist wearing a white ceramic mask with facial features – two slits for eyes, and an impressions of a mouth, nose, and eyebrows. Being Euro-Caribbean in complexion herself, the harsh whiteness of the mask exaggerates her pale skin tone. The character represents a somewhat invisible figure in Caribbean cultural narratives – the white creole woman. The multiplicity of being such a figure was introduced in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, where the creole character Antoinette laments:

“It’s a song about a white cockroach. That’s me. That’s what they call all of us […] and I’ve heard English women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.”²⁶

Barbadian artist Joscelyn Gardner expanded on this inquiry with a more discursive structural framework during her 2004 exhibition White Skin. Black Kin: “Speaking the Unspeakable”:

“white + Creole + woman. How does one define / theorize a body that is at once visible (in its “native” space) and invisible (in the Western world)? In probing white female Creole identity in the postcolonial English-speaking Caribbean, the multi-layered complexities of a geographically fragmented and imperially constructed region must be considered. Here, a violent colonial history of institutionalized trans-Atlantic / plantation slavery fundamentally informed by Christianity and patriarchy has shaped a multiracial society in which the white female Creole body becomes the site of simultaneous privilege and marginalization.”http://www.joscelyngardner.com/html/texts_cat_gardner3.htm (last accessed July 15th 2015).'>²⁷

In the Sudden White installation, McGilchrist is acknowledging what is widely signified as Jamaican culture, and turning it on its head to present an alternative Caribbean circumstance. Her inquiry takes the perplexities as outlined above and consciously negates trying to fit into or define a perception of the white creole woman, including the presumptive notions of whiteness as equating to power in Jamaica, which although something that exists in the island, is not a true indicator of all white circumstances. She also goes beyond the quest for identity and instead encompasses the diversity of Caribbean ethnicity and experience in her work by placing the white creole woman in Jamaican scenes. This speaks to those who do not have seamless connections to the landscape as part of a personal Caribbean self-understanding, especially those who function outside of the physical region, in a diaspora, for an extended period of time. The white creole woman has been a part of the Caribbean regardless of how connected she may seem to the landscape, and her interpretation of this is as valid as any other experience. Through the digital immersive installation, McGilchrist is creating a new visual language for this previously unrepresented imagery, and allowing for it to facilitate broadened discourse.

Of the ‘alter natives’ outlined, however, Trinbagonian artist Rodell Warner (b.1986) can be viewed as the one who most deeply explores the possibilities for digital mediums as tools of creating a new creative language in negating preconceptions of ‘Caribbeanness’. His Mysterycycle x Toomucheyes series (2014) explores digital manipulation by intervening postcard-like snapshots of Trinidad with custom pixel-GIFs. The works are self-described as a ‘mash-up’ of two aesthetics Warner streams via his Tumblr sites.http://mysterycycle.tumblr.com/ (last accessed July 29^th 2015); Toomucheyes: http://toomucheyes.tumblr.com/ (last accessed July 29^th 2015).'>²⁸ One of these in the series of eight depicts a landscape scene of a road with vegetation (including palm trees) on one side and a quaint house with a mountain and more palm trees behind it. But the image has been inverted, and flashes from negative black and white whilst a jagged, organism-like abstraction shifts down the road. Another, a scene of a street lined with store-fronts and pedestrians also flashes a grainy contrasted black and white, with a digital abstraction morphing continuously over one figure’s head. The aesthetics of both give the impression of static, as though a transmitted image caught a digital virus and a conversation between old and new technologies was ensuing before the viewer. Both of the original images used are vintage and had been sourced by the artist online, then curated on his Tumblr blog. The newly created works with the GIFs inserted also signifies a ‘mash up’ of Warner as a creator and curator of visual language. However, this is not necessarily a resistance to those picturesque images, as an experimentation of visual languages, negating the need for any interpretation (far less one around identity) to be derived from each work.

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Gender

The perception of ‘Caribbeanness’ in gender roles is another site of interrogation when navigating visual language for these artists. Barbadian Alberta Whittle (b. 1984) for instance, highlights hyper-sexuality in Barbados’ ‘fete culture’ in her hybrid of digital collage-performance pieces, with an emphasis on the implications of the gender stereotypes. In Barbados, ‘fetes’ refer to huge social events, strongly connected to dancehall music, or, at around the time of Crop Over,²⁹ soca music. The events are usually themed around aspects of lyrics and trends in popular dancehall songs. Drawing inspiration from these fete advertisement posters around Barbados, Whittle re-appropriated an advertising campaign in her 2012 – 2014 series Hustle de Money – a Performance by Bertie aka Big Red aka De General outta Glitter Zone, which came as a result of a residency at Fresh Milk in 2012. The works featured Whittle as both the female and male characters starring in digital posters, and a physical performance piece as both genders. The posters arguably act as direct social deconstruction of the overt sexual nature of fete advertisements, parodying the same aesthetic language. Whittle describes the process of the series as full immersion into the cultural landscape of Barbados:

“Mirroring the distribution of the original “fete” posters, my collages are printed and hung from walls and railings in the physical realm as well as presented online. The familiarity of this technique of displaying posters advertising club nights renders them almost invisible. They camouflage into the landscape, assimilating within this easily recognizable visual language until perused more thoroughly when something seems amiss within normative presentations of gender.”http://www.albertawhittle.com/big-red-aka-bertie.html (last sourced July 30 2015).'>³⁰

In one image, entitled Mek Ya Body Jump Jump Jump / Wine Up Wine Up Wine Up the female figure is repeated on different areas of the poster in tightly fitted clothing, touching herself or posing provocatively whilst dozens of American dollar bills rain down on her. At the same time in the bottom right and left hand corner of the poster, a male figure stands proud with his possessions beside him: expensive cars and the female figure again ‘posed off’ presumably to highlight her best assets, which ultimately seem to also belong to him. A second poster entitled Girl You’re my Pleasure and my Pain, Let’s do This Again and Again features a rainforest background and again a repeated image of an over-sexualized woman posing with a hoodie-wearing man, surrounded by visuals of money and lions. However through this work, Whittle arguably transcends “mirroring” to undermine the significance of this fete culture as synchronous to an absolute Caribbean aesthetic. Not all Caribbean women aspire to be dancehall queens, and this doesn’t lessen their authenticity of being from the region. As self-portraits, Whittle is exploring her own sense of belonging in the glut of overt urbanized iconography.

Harris also interrogates the perception of gender in her animations, for instance her 2012 work A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes When You’re Awake. In this animation a swan-girl protagonist grapples with an imagined Disney-esque idyllic life conflicting with the mundane realities of her physical environment. It affects everything from interactions with other characters to the swan’s sense of physical self worth when compared to the ‘beauty’ that is inaccessible to her but mass fed through Television. The colouring and aesthetic techniques used in this work are the same of that previously mentioned – sharp outlines, muted tones. The only appearance of softness or a bright palette is when the Disney characters are layered on top of the animation.

 

By using the same digital tool that is often used to present these ideals in Disney animations, Harris is transforming the way women in the Caribbean are often packaged alongside the landscape as a beautiful commodity in advertising. In addition, she unpacks how mainstream standards of femininity are ethnically biased – where do diverse body images fit in contemporary media? It seems that although ‘ideal beauty’ for females is becoming more flexible for images of white women (with the popularization of plus-size modeling), other ethnicities are still tied to mainstream notions of social appeal.

One criticism in portraying these featured works as negating preconceptions of ‘Caribbeanness’ whether in landscape or gender is how to then ‘place’ them in the art historical narrative of the Caribbean. With growing access to digital and virtual tools, there should be an increase of ease in connecting the contemporary visuals with their historical predecessors. However, the somewhat ‘radical’ proposal here is that this is not necessary to understand the nature of the works. The artists do not need to be identified on a spectrum of Caribbean works that existed before them, even though they may be aware of these works. What is appearing as more relevant to their creative practice is the nature of connections and collaborations, opening up the discourses of a contemporary Caribbean experience.

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Navigating New Connections through Collaboration

The practice of these four ‘alter natives’ are all known to each other, and the five-way contribution to making this essay possible means that for the most part at some point we were in conversation with each other. This includes digital conversations via video conferences with three of the artists and myself to implement my belief in a community of curatorial practice rather than a hierarchal approach to the artist-writer relationship. It also serves as an illustration of how digital mediums facilitate a shift towards a creative ecology of new Caribbean visual language – navigating new connections through collaboration. The process of compiling this essay in the digital conversations with these artists was a manifestation of an organismic network of Caribbean creatives. Personal experiences were shared around dealing with the “strings of identity tying us to some vast gorge of expectations from people both inside and outside the region.”³¹ About how our creative movements function in the islands and in the diaspora. And in evaluating the implications of identity, in a somewhat neutral and an isolated virtual space, a collaborative mindset shift was being facilitated.

In these small Anglophone Caribbean islands where there is very little institutional support for expanding thought on contemporary art, and even less funding attributed to this area of culture, the presence of informal platforms and virtual creative-collaborative initiatives become influential beyond intention. Cultural theorist Dr. Marsha Pearce reiterated the value of intraregional connections through her investigation into the affective nature of artist residencies in the Anglophone Caribbean, stating:

“The residency has become a new normative doing that has quickly ascended to the top of a hierarchy of all of the various tasks and projects involved in the practice of visual arts in the Anglophone Caribbean… Many of the residencies host and facilitate visiting artists from Western countries—a move that exposes local art communities to doings and sayings in visual arts practice in other parts of the world, with the possibility of idea exchanges and long-term connections.”http://www.seachangejournal.ca/PDF/2014_Practice(s)/Pearce_Artist-Residencies.pdf (last accessed 30 July 2015).'>³²

The ‘idea exchanges’ exist in digital spaces as well, for instance delivering this essay was a collaborative process, facilitated by digital connections and mediums. Another example is that in October 2015 Fresh Milk implemented a co-curated project in collaboration with RM in New Zealand and VAN Lagos in Nigeria, with one component of being exhibited completely online.³³It is within these artistic communities and virtual exchanges that Caribbean creatives are transcending boundaries in order to nurture projects void of a pre-determined audience. This collaborative connectedness is explicit in the works of the four ‘alter natives’.

For instance, Whittle’s performance initiative with South African artist Farieda Nazier Rights of Admission in 2013-2014 has built a strong online presence through Tumblr, Facebook, and the artists’ individual blog spaces.³⁴ Rights of Admission disrupted media-driven notions of identity and beauty, through a series of performances and public interruptions. By co-constructing the series with a South African artist, Whittle arguably transcends a strictly ‘Caribbean’ agenda and engages in a space where culture is a personal organism exchanged with the environment.

McGilchrist embraces a similar connectedness through Otherness, a 2014 collaboration between her self and Guyanese artist Jean Small. In this digital reality of the isolated video space, the two artists visually strip down the term ‘other’, physically comparing ethnicity and age throughout the work. This is an authentically co-created piece, as Small’s poetry is interwoven through the visuals. In this process both artists are eliminating the relevance of ‘other’ in their cultural self-awareness. An inquiry into difference becomes an exchange of shared ideas.

 

Warner, during his time at Caribbean Linked in 2013, also explored shared artistic spaces with a series of works projecting digital patterns on some of the other artists in residence. The series, entitled Light and Body involved bodies interrupting light being projected onto a paper sculpture. Warner was physically inviting other artists to interject the flow process of his installation, which then revealed new relationships between the projection and the material it encountered. Colours and shapes shifted and the outline of a figure added a contouring layer to the captured digital image.

 

Harris connected with her artistic community via cross-disciplinary collaboration when she illustrated the eBook Talamak: Dessa Darling’s Memoir by Barbadian Amanda Haynes.³⁵ The two creatives worked together on the Fresh Milk Books team (a derivative of the Fresh Milk Arts Platform Barbados), and the digital publication Talamak is an example of how alternate visual and literary narratives transcended boundaries between creative practices in the Caribbean.

 

This is just a selection of work being produced by the ‘alter native’ community in the Caribbean, and it should be emphasized that the artists highlighted in this essay were not chosen because they are any more immersed in an inquiry beyond identity than other contemporary practitioners in the region. It is a collective transcendence. It should also be noted that using digital mediums and virtual platforms is not without dangers. For example in 2014 images of Trinbagonian artist Brianna McCarthy’s work Paper Queens were taken from her website and imposed onto items of clothing in New York as original design by a brand company Koodoo.³⁶ However, despite the risks, being a somewhat creolized aesthetic (with as Cozier stated “no owned history”) digital art media is providing limitless spaces for these artists to shatter the identity box. The ‘alter natives’ in the Caribbean region and diaspora boldly go beyond just navigating our visual language. They are dissolving boundaries, negating preconceptions and sculpting collaborative connectedness in order to transcend into an ecological visual narrative.

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Natalie McGuire‘s practice focuses on community-led cultural programming in the Caribbean. She holds an MA in Museums and Cultural Heritage from The University of Auckland, NZ, and a BA in Art History from The University of Leicester, UK. Whilst in Auckland, she co-curated the 2014 Caribbean Community Day at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In her role as Community Programming Curator at Fresh Milk Barbados, Natalie has contributed to its diverse programming, and curated projects including the exhibition ‘A Negation of Preconceptions’, and the ‘Transoceanic Visual Exchange’. Currently Natalie is also a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill), and Guest Curator – Community Outreach at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. She contributes to regional platforms such as ARC Magazine, Small Axe and AICA Southern Caribbean, and was the writer in residence for Caribbean Linked III in 2015.

1. Paul, A. “Christopher Cozier,” BOMB (2003), bombsite.com/issues/82/articles/2524 (accessed 22 July 2015).
2. Thompson, K. “’No abstract art here’: the problem of the visual in contemporary Anglo-Caribbean art” Small Axe 23, (June, 2007).
3. Colucci, E. ‘Too Many Paths Leading Every Which Way at Caribbean: Crossroads of the World’, Hyperallergic, June 14 2012 http://hyperallergic.com/52853/caribbean-crossroads-of-the-world/
4. A parameter of how Caribbean a concept is. Referred to by Krista Thompson in Curating in the Caribbean (2012), 99.
5. As quoted by Wickham, J. ‘Literature and being Barbadian’, in Carmichael, T. (ed.) Barbados – Thirty Years of Independence (1996), 238.
6. Wynter, S. Unsettling the Coloniality of Being / Power / Truth / Freedom, (2000) 311-312
7. Cherry, C. On Human Communication, MIT, (1968) 95.
8. Odum, E.P., G. W. Barrett, Fundamentals of Ecology, Brooks Cole, (2005) 113.
9. Christopher Cozier, Nicholas Laughlin, and Sean Leonard
10. www.aliceyard.blogspot.com
11. http://seeyouonsundays.com
12. www.caribbeanlinked.com
13. www.freshmilkbarbados.com
14. Smith, M.G. “West Indian Culture”, Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 7, no.3 (Dec 1961): 117.
15. See Glissant’s Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (1989).
16. Hall, S. ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’ (1990) In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, culture, difference, London: Lawrence & Wishart. (1990), 222-237.
17. See An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque (2007).
18. Annan, B., Annan, J., Wootton., M and Burton, R. “Facilitated Networks of Learning”, Seminar Series , issue 237 (September 2014): 3-23.
19. www.arcthemagazine.com
20. www.nlskingston.org/
21. www.ateliers89.com
22. ‘Notes on Wrestling with the Image’ Wrestling with the Image (2011): 13. http://www.artzpub.com/sites/default/files/pdf/wwtil.pdf (last accessed 25 July 2015).
23. Ruskin, J. Modern Painters (ed. David Barrie), Vol. 4 Part 5. (1987).
24. See for example The Gallery of Caribbean Art in Barbados: http://artgallerycaribbean.com/artistlist.php
25. Krista Thompson, An Eye For the Tropics: Tourism, Photography and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque (2006) 5-6.
26. Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) 85.
27. Joscelyn Gardner, Re-presenting Creole Identity, http://www.joscelyngardner.com/html/texts_cat_gardner3.htm (last accessed July 15th 2015).
28. Mystercycle: http://mysterycycle.tumblr.com/ (last accessed July 29^th 2015); Toomucheyes: http://toomucheyes.tumblr.com/ (last accessed July 29^th 2015).
29. The period from June until the first Monday in August every year, which traditionally marked celebrations of the end of the Sugar Cane cutting, is Barbados’ Carnival season.
30. Alberta Whittle, Big Red aka Bertie, http://www.albertawhittle.com/big-red-aka-bertie.html (last sourced July 30 2015).
31. Video Conference with Alberta Whittle, Versia Harris, and Olivia McGilchrist, Sept 2014.
32. Marsha Pearce, ‘Artist Residencies in the Caribbean: Recuperating the Teleoaffective Structure of Visual Arts Practice in the Anglophone Islands’ Seachange Journal (2014): 32-33. http://www.seachangejournal.ca/PDF/2014_Practice(s)/Pearce_Artist-Residencies.pdf (last accessed 30 July 2015).
33. www.transoceanicvisualexchange.com
34. See http://albertawhittle.com
35. Which can be read at http://issuu.com/flybooks/docs/talamak-_dessa_darling_s_memoir (last sourced July 30 2015).
36. https://brothersperspective.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/stop-the-bootleg-brianna-mccarthy-work-stolen-by-koodoobrand/