Annalee Davis

References

i Best, Curwen. The Politics of Caribbean Cyber Culture. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print.

ii Also referenced in Katherine Kennedy’s contribution to the publication Solitude Atlas. Stuttgart: Akademie Schloss Solitude, 2015. Print.

iii Petroni, Ilze, Sepúlveda T., Jorge. Directory of Autonomous Contemporary Visual Arts Initiatives – Latin America. Córdoba: Curatoría Forense, 2014. Print.

iv ivrisse-crochemar, caryl*. Founder of 14°N 61°W, Martinique. Online interview.

v Anzinger, Deborah. Founder of NLS, Jamaica. Online interview.

vi McGuire, Natalie. Community Programming Curator at Fresh Milk, Barbados. Online interview.

vii Hunter, Dominique. Guyanese artist. Online interview.

viii Minnis, Jodi. Bahamian artist. Online interview.

ix Alleyne, Llanor. Barbadian artist. Online interview.

x Maldonado, Sofia. Puerto Rican artist. Online interview.

xi Gosine, Andil. Toronto-based, Trinidadian artist. Online interview. xii Pearson Clarke, Michèle. Toronto-based, Trinidadian artist. Online interview. xiii Bynoe, Holly. Director of ARC Magazine and Chief Curator at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas. Online interview. xiv Simon-Kennedy, Kira. Co-founder of China Residencies. Online interview. xv Verna, Gaëtane. Director of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Phone interview.

Biography: Katherine Kennedy is a Barbadian artist and writer. She graduated with a BA in Creative Arts from Lancaster University, UK (2011). She currently works for the Fresh Milk Art Platform in Barbados as the Communications and Operations Manager and has contributed to ARC Magazine of contemporary Caribbean art as a Writer, Editor and the Assistant to Director. Through these platforms, she has coordinated and managed programmes such the Caribbean Linked residency & exhibition programme at Ateliers ’89, Aruba, and the biennial Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE) international video, film and new media exhibition. Her written work has been published with platforms such as Sugarcane Magazine (Volume 1, Issue No. 3) and Robert & Christopher Publishers in the A-Z of Caribbean Art (2019).

Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc.

The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc. is a Caribbean non-profit, artist-led, interdisciplinary organization that supports creatives through engagement with society and cultivates excellence in the arts. The idea for Fresh Milk developed over years of conversations around the need for contemporary artists in Barbados to have a safe space to innovate, gather and create, as well as to counter the nearly 100% attrition rate of BFA students at Barbados Community College (BCC). Given the traumatic legacy of the Caribbean, the region is not always associated with the idea of nurturing. Fresh Milk moves against the grain of history by supporting different kinds of activity on this loaded site, a working dairy farm operational originally as a sugarcane plantation from the mid 17th century. The organisation fosters an open, critical environment which favours meaningful engagement in a hospitable space favouring various processes of art making including inter-disciplinary work and research based art practices. By strengthening regional and diasporic links and shaping new relationships globally, Fresh Milk aims to span creative disciplines, generations, and linguistic territories in the Caribbean. Through the residency programme as well as the specific projects Tilting Axis, Caribbean Linked and Transoceanic Visual Exchange, Fresh Milk continues to contribute to the collaborative ecology of the creative Caribbean.

Residencies

Fresh Milk officially launched its international micro-residency programme in 2013 after a number of successful projects by invited artists. Formalizing the programme and opening it up both locally and to interested international creatives seemed like the logical direction for the platform to take as interest grew, and as we more carefully considered how best to increase visibility and expand critical dialogues around contemporary art beyond our shores. As the framework developed and decisions were made, such as becoming a member of network of over 400 residencies, Res Artis, we wanted to ensure that our core concerns of giving back to Barbados and the Caribbean were not overshadowed by international commitments. We asked ourselves- what should we look for in a proposal; what are the requirements, if any, of the residents; what will Fresh Milk’s role be in their stay, and how can we facilitate the best experience for the artist and the community? Fresh Milk has received a large number of proposals between 2013 and 2016 and we have hosted 10 local and 24 international residents. We have noticed a few natural trends emerging in terms of the types of submissions we receive. One is a significant interest from Caribbean diasporic artists who are seeking a connection to the region in order to explore how their work, which is often read in contexts outside of the Caribbean, may resonate or change from within it. For example, Canadian artist of Barbadian heritage Nadijah Robinson, while considering her sense of belonging in the island versus Toronto and through presenting her work to final year students in the BFA programme at BCC, mentioned that she began to consider her goals as a socially engaged artist in an alternate way. This lends itself to the other trend we have come to look for in applications; artists seeking to carry out some form of community outreach while they are here. Although we consider this a ‘requirement’, we have found that most people include this in their proposal regardless, which shows a genuine interest in the local creative arena as opposed to the appeal of simply having a studio space available to work in isolation. These engagements - sometimes spawning from previous connections, such as our meeting Scottish curators Tiffany Boyle and Jessica Carden of Mother Tongue in Glasgow while participating in group project with other organizations from the Commonwealth - often result in ongoing projects or return visits. Mother Tongue will be returning to Barbados in 2016 to curate an exhibition locally. In March, 2015 we hosted Barbadian-Canadian visual artist Jordan Clarke, who while at Fresh Milk explored her Caribbean identity. She took the time and space to focus on her practice, connect with the Bajan community and exchange ideas with local artists, especially those dealing with identity politics in their work. Jordan confronted some of the underlying ideas around her disconnect with the Barbadian side of her ancestry, and saw her experience in the island as a starting point to build on as she investigated this part of her culture and herself. Alongside the international residencies, we have continued to support local artists through the ‘My Time’ local residency programme, kindly funded by a group of philanthropic donors. Between April and May, we were very pleased to have Simone Asia participate in this. She saw this period as a “playground for opportunities,” taking the chance to experiment with surface, scale and technique while exploring and responding organically to the environment at Fresh Milk. Our final residency of 2015 was with Danish artists Maj Hasager and Ask Kæreby, who Fresh Milk first connected with as a result of a fellowship the platform was awarded in 2014 to spend three months working with Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. Maj, an artist, and Ask, an electronic composer, spent their month undertaking research in Barbados, engaging with the local arts and music community. Maj instigated discussions focusing on notions of praxis and materiality while Ask conducted a series of experimental sound workshops. The public event FRESH MILK XVIII provided a platform for them, as well as featuring the Beyond Publishing Caribbean team speaking about selfpublishing in Barbados.

Our interest is in building thoughtful, sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships that will nurture local, regional and international artistic discourse and practices.

spotlight

Tilting Axis

The inaugural conference “Tilting Axis: Within and Beyond the Caribbean - Shifting Models of Sustainability and Connectivity” was held at Fresh Milk on February 27-28, 2015. It aimed to promote greater conversations and interactions between artists and professionals working within artistled initiatives across the wider Caribbean region, build and redefine historical relationships with those in the North, and establish open dialogue with active networks emerging in the Global South. The roving meeting, conceptualized by ARC and Fresh Milk, expanded to include partnerships with Res Artis and PAMM who collectively hosted the initial gathering. Tilting Axis facilitates emerging ideas to resonate and take shape outside of our singular environments, many of which are small islands functioning in vacuums of institutional support. The notion of ‘tilting the axis’ refers to shifting the focus of our gaze; which most often looks to the north; to understand and value our own strengths and lived realities while looking south to build alliances. The goals of Tilting Axis are to (i) promote greater conversations and engagement between artists and professionals working within artist-led initiatives across the Caribbean (ii) create opportunities for integration and collaboration to take place regionally and between international foundations, cultural organisations and practitioners (iii) enable local, regional and international artist networks to share best practices, methodologies and ideas (iv) develop action plans for continued collaboration and for moving the Caribbean out of a peripheral position into larger art conversations (v) open dialogue with strong networks emerging globally in the South (vi) build and redefine historical relationships, from our perspective in the Caribbean, with the North. (vi) meet annually, both in and out of the Caribbean, to grow the network, explore new models and effect change. The declared focus of the inaugural meeting was on sustaining the visual arts and connecting the Caribbean to itself. The small two-day conference brought together 31 individuals, independent art organisations, national galleries and museums operating across the Caribbean, U.S., E.U., with links to Africa and China. For the first time, Dutch, Spanish, French and English artist led initiatives met physically in the Caribbean. It was critical that this gathering took place on Caribbean soil and that the visual arts sector was considered from within the archipelago as a counterpoint to many decisions often made about the region from external locations. Tilting Axis reaffirms the critical value of networks popping up in the region, confirms relationships beyond inherited colonial legacies and traditional trade routes. Tilting Axis is becoming an annual gathering, confirming a commitment to support the region’s community of creative activists within an archipelago both linked and fragmented by colonial encounters, post-independent challenges and more recent economic trials. The tilt, or the shift; collectively expressed as a reframing of the Caribbean beyond linguistic divisions and national borders, allows us to become more expansive and mobile, continuously opening us up to varied possibilities and diverse conceivable possibilities. PAMM is the host of the second meeting in 2016 and the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands will host it in 2017.

Caribbean Linked

Caribbean Linked III took place in August of this year at Ateliers ‘89, Aruba. The Caribbean Linked Artist Residency Programme, organized by Fresh Milk, ARC and Ateliers ‘89, is a crucial space for building awareness across disparate creative communities of the Caribbean by finding ways to connect young and emerging creatives from all of the linguistic regions with each other. The participants this year were Natusha Croes, Jodi Minnis, Ronald Cyrille, Simone Asia, Manuel Mathieu, Aiko Maya Roudette, Razia Barsatie, Marvi Johanna Franco Zapata, Leasho Johnson, Alex Kelly, Leo Aguirre, Diego Espinosa and Natalie McGuire. This third iteration of the residency programme was a longer and arguably more honed project, evolving into a mature awareness of creative collaborations in the Caribbean and allowing for strong bonds between the artists to form. As one of the directors Holly Bynoe stated: “There is this knowledge, this knowing within knowing and being within being that makes me fully confident that the group this year got it, and they have left a mark on me. They understand the nature of it; The nurture of it; Its hidden parts; Its vulnerability and its audacity; Its truth and function; They understand its impossibility and they are grateful.” A requirement for participating in the Caribbean Linked residency was that the artists had to engage with the Aruban public via presentations on their practice. These were done in nightly succession, and this openness between the artists, as well as the collectively shared vulnerability on presenting to audiences, contributed to the almost immediate kinship formed within the residency group. This really exemplifies the ideals of Caribbean Linked, providing a platform that transcends geographical limitations and connects young creatives to help strengthen the regional network of practice in the arts.

Transoceanic Visual Exchange

From January to October 2015, Fresh Milk reflected being a ‘cultural lab’, by connecting three geographical regions via an experimental project Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE). The aim of TVE was to transcend traditional geo-political borders of the Caribbean, Africa and Aoteaora and broaden cultural understanding in contemporary artistic practices in film and video work in those regions. Fresh Milk partnered with two other artist-led spaces: RM, in Auckland, New Zealand; and Video Art Network Lagos in Nigeria, Africa. The initiatives first met as participants of International Artists Initiated, a programme organized and facilitated by David Dale Gallery, Glasgow. One main aim of the project was to facilitate a ‘community of curatorial practice’. At Fresh Milk, the project team did so by holding two workshops with regional creatives working in film and video. The groups used the space to interrogate the nature of film, new media and video works in the Caribbean, how they are created, interpreted and widely received. The main summary points from the conversation suggested the mediums should embrace diverse themes as opposed to ones centred on identity; that film is a ‘safe space’ to bring up difficult societal discourse; and how film & video can be used as an exploration of the space between ‘fine art’ and ‘popular culture’ in the Caribbean. The project culminated in a series of screenings