Fresh Milk would like to thank everyone who worked with us, supported us, or took an interest in our programming & the fabulous work being done in the Caribbean arts last year.
We look forward to an exciting year ahead, and invite you to reflect on 2017 with us through our annual year in review newsletter!
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Kraig Yearwood, Ghetto Moon, 2017. Photo by Dondre Trotman.
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Our first resident artist for 2017 was Barbadian artist & designer Kraig Yearwood, who was our 4th recipient of the My Time Local Residency opportunity. During this residency, Kraig explored new materials such as concrete, resin, rubbish & discarded objects to produce a series of sculptures which delve into themes of consumption, materialism and mass production.
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Our public event FRESH MILK XX celebrated both of these residents, including a poetry reading by drea brown, and Kraig Yearwood in conversation with Pamela Lee, an international curator and gallery manager who has worked at the Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney, Australia, who also made a presentation about the connections and potential for collaborations between the areas of art and science.
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In June, Fresh Milk welcomed US-based interdisciplinary artist Nyugen Smith and Bahamian writer Letitia Pratt. Nyugen spent his time exploring the landscape of Barbados & performing investigative actions on the grounds of Fresh Milk, which included video and photo-based projects, synthesizing his experience and findings with his interests in African cosmology.
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Letitia used the residency to work on a series of poems questioning the ways in which misogyny manifests in the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean, exploring commonalities and differences through Caribbean history and folklore with emphasis on the tale of the ‘Hag Woman’.
Both residents showcased their work at our public event FRESH MILK XXI, where Nyugen did a live performance and Letitia shared the poetry she had developed in Barbados.
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In September art historian & PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, Scotland Kate Keohane joined us. Kate's research focuses on complicating the effect of globalisation in contemporary creative fields – particularly the way ‘paradises’ are framed in the cultural imaginary with reference to the use of the Caribbean landscape in global contemporary art.
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US-based filmmaker Chelsea Odufu & German-born painter Philipp Pieroth were the artists in residence for the month of October. Chelsea used her residency to begin doing ethnography research about Caribbean culture, specifically centered around Afro Caribbean traditions and Crop Over, to inform a short documentary she is working on.
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Philipp began a body of work to explore the idea of identity in Barbados using site specific research, combining ethnographical field work with cultural history. Both Chelsea & Philipp made presentations to the BFA students at Barbados Community College (BCC), and Philipp also facilitated a mural project for some of the students.
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Our final residents for 2017 were UK-based artists Hannah Catherine Jones and Umi Baden-Powell, of Barbadian and Dominican heritage respectively. During their residency, under their collective agency Ancestral Architecture (AA), they explored ideas around "decolonized” bush rum as a vehicle to connect with their ancestors and as a means of self-healing from traumatic histories, combined with elements of ritual, music and performance.
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Tilting Axis 3 at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands
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Projects & Partnerships...
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The quarterly Barbadian and Caribbean arts newsletter RA (Representing Artists) was produced in the early nineties, spearheaded by a group of Barbados-based artists who saw the need to create a forum for more critical writing around contemporary arts in the region. As part of her Tilting Axis Fellowship that saw her travel to arts spaces throughout the Caribbean, Jamaican writer and curator Nicole Smythe-Johnson digitized all six editions of this newsletter to make them available for public access on the Fresh Milk website. This inaugural curatorial fellowship was supported by the British Council.
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From May 18-20, 2017 The National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) welcomed over 80 guests to Tilting Axis 3. Tilting Axis, conceptualized by ARC Magazine and Fresh Milk, brings together arts professionals based in the Caribbean & its diasporas and global professionals whose practices are influenced by the region. The goal of the conference is to facilitate opportunities and contribute to the growth of the Caribbean creative sector.
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In 2017, we shared our first regional open call for Caribbean visual artists to submit digital pieces for consideration to be displayed on our Fresh Milk ArtBoard. After receiving input from an advisory group of creative professionals around the region, our team selected work by Saint-Martin born, Martinique based artist David Gumbs to be displayed.
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The Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc (BTMI) invited Fresh Milk to participate in their programme “Journeys to Barbados,” which aimed to facilitate cross cultural exchange between US-based arts professionals and artists from Barbados. The delegates attended the opening of Resonance, where they were given a presentation about Fresh Milk and had the chance to speak with some of the exhibiting artists.
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TVE 2017 was divided into 3 segments:
Video installations: Mohini Chandra (Fiji), rc campos (Brazil), David Gumbs (St. Martin/Martinique) and Lisa Hilli (Papua New Guinea)
Narrative/Documentary Films: Alanna Lockward (Dominican Republic), Craig Santos Perez (Guam/Hawaii), Alberta Whittle (Barbados), Katia Café-Fébrissy (Guadeloupe/Toronto), Juliette McCawley (Trinidad & Tobago), Danielle Rusell (Jamaica) and Lisa Taouma (Samoa)
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Experimental Video Art: Louisa Afoa (Samoa), Black Birds (Fiji/Tokealu/Grenada/Maori), Di-Andre Caprice Davis (Jamaica), Lionel Cruet (Puerto Rico), Tricia Diaz (Trinidad & Tobago), Deborah Jack (St. Maarten/USA), Shivanjani Lal (Fiji), Natalia Mann (Samoan/European), Jodi Minnis (The Bahamas)
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Experimental Video Art cont'd: Sofia Gallisá Muriente (Puerto Rico), Adam Patterson (Barbados/UK), Oneika Russell (Jamaica), Shanice Smith (Trinidad & Tobago), Talia Smith (Samoan/Cook Islands/New Zealand), Luis Vasquez La Roche (Venezuela/Trinidad & Tobago) and Joanna Helfer (Scotland), Sandra Vivas (Venezuela/Dominica), Rodell Warner (Trinidad & Tobago), Nick Whittle (Barbados/UK) and Anisah Wood (Barbados).
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Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to continuing our creative journey together in 2018!
You can find out about even more of our programming by checking our website freshmilkbarbados.com regularly.
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