Therese Hadchity 19:00 - 21:30
Ateliers’89
8 lectures on contemporary art and art related topics in the Caribbean
July (03-07 to 13-07)
You are invited to an interesting series of lectures on art in relation to the culture of the Caribbean. Our lecturer is art historian Therese Hadchity from Barbados.
Many interesting topics will be addressed. To mention a few:
The different art forms and their superpowers;
Caribbean popular expressions; The popular as unifying agent;
The popular as anti-European; Pioneers of Caribbean anti-colonialism; Generational transitions in Caribbean art; From nation building to nation critique, diaspora, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism; Cultural policy and the concept of the ‘Art Institution’
Museums, galleries, alternative spaces, biennials; Representations of Caribbean history in visual art, Public monuments in the Caribbean
Curatorship.
Short bio
Therese Hadchity lives in Barbados since 1990, where she worked as a gallerist, freelance curator, art writer and lecturer. She grew up in Denmark and earned her first degree in art history from the University of Copenhagen.
She earned her PhD from UWI Cave Hill in 2016 with a dissertation centered on generational dynamics in Caribbean Visual art. Her current research interests encompass Caribbean modernisms, media-studies, environmental humanities and post humanist thought. She is a temporary lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies at Cave Hill.
REPORT ON VISIT TO ATELIERS ’89, ARUBA
At the invitation of Elvis Lopez, Margriet Kruijver and Gerrit Van der Hout, I gave a series of lectures at the Ateliers ’89 in Oranjestad, Aruba, from July 3rd – 13th 2023. The arrangement was that I stayed in one of the guest apartments on the compound and lectured in the Black Box auditorium in the evenings from Monday-Thursday of both weeks.
The lectures were offered as one of the many and varied workshops continually offered by Ateliers ’89 to the Aruban arts community. They were centered on Caribbean art history and its critical context and the following topics were covered:
1) The unique features of different artforms
2) Colonial and anti-colonial aesthetics in the Anglophone Caribbean
3) Caribbean art vis-à-vis diaspora, multi-culturalism, and cosmopolitanism
4) Post-colonial perspectives
5) Caribbean popular expressions
6) Art institutions and cultural policy in the Caribbean
7) Caribbean public monuments
8) The Caribbean contemporary
The audience for the lectures mainly consisted of alumni and friends of Ateliers ’89. I was impressed by the generational and professional diversity of the attendees, and one of my most treasured memories of the entire experience was the mutual support and solidarity that so clearly existed among the students at Ateliers ‘89. One evening we spent a few hours touring and discussing the current exhibitions of works in ceramics and installation. I found the overall conceptual and technical quality of the works to be impressive, but I was also moved by the way students and instructors had an eye for the nuances and details of one another’s works to the extent that speaking about someone else’s production came almost as naturally to them as speaking of their own.
As for my lectures, my impression was that they were well received, though some of them may have been a little too long with too many layers added on. On most evenings, the questions and additional information offered by Elvis Lopez or members of the audience generated lively and critical discussions. I was surprised – and so were several of the participants by their own admission – to discover how little exchange of information have been generated between the Dutch and Anglophone Caribbean arts communities. Despite the different histories of these territories, they share similar challenges in the contemporary artworld and clearly have much to offer one another in respect of knowledge and opportunity sharing.
Based on my insights into the Caribbean art world, the longevity of Ateliers ’89 is something of an anomaly and a huge debt of gratitude is owed to the managers of the space – Elvis, Margriet and Geert – for their tenacity and perseverance. I lost count of the people – both at the Ateliers and outside of it - who spoke favorably of the space and the personal care, encouragement and interventions Elvis Lopez has offered so many aspiring artists and cultural practitioners across a
very wide spectrum of artistic expressions. I think it says a lot about his sense of commitment to the entire creative community that he made a point of attending a school-play in San Nicolas on a Saturday evening (I came along and enjoyed it very much)! During our outings, I was indeed amused by the sense that I was in the company of a local celebrity, who was recognized and hailed by people wherever we went.
A number of students and audience members – Danilo Geerman, Fernando Vermeer, Samuel Sarmiento, Velvet Zoe Ramos, Romelinda Maldonado, Artuno Desimone (and others more informally) - invited me to visit their studios or brought/sent work for me to see at the Ateliers. I appreciated these occasions very much and found the work, irrespective of its level of accomplishment, to be sincere and at times highly original and innovative. It was therefore distressing to learn that several of these artists have had very limited opportunities (or indeed future prospects) for exhibiting their work locally and abroad. In general, I found it curious that Aruba which, relative to its size, probably boasts more murals and public sculpture than any other nation in the Caribbean, has no national collection of art that is available to local citizens or visitors (I was lucky to be invited to view a large private collection, but clearly this opportunity is not afforded any other tourist). Given Aruba’s general living standards and thriving tourism industry, it surprised me a great deal that previous efforts to tap into the ‘orange economy’ so widely predicted to be a major driver of future tourism do not appear to be followed through with a more long term commitment to the creative community. The commissioning of a series of blue horses from the artist Osaira Muyale and the mural project in San Nicolas are both commendable, but do not appear to have been seconded by wider initiatives to market and promote Aruban art. The lesson learnt from destinations like Cuba, Jamaica and Martinique is that a local art museum, national gallery, or well-funded foundation (however modest in scale), where art is put on display without a directly commercial intent can transforms a destination into a cultural hub with a trickle-down effect for the entire cultural economy and the branding of the destination more generally: artists who enjoy institutional endorsement and exposure enjoy greater demand, higher prices and are in a better position to find international exhibition opportunities, all of which ultimately contribute substantially to the exposure and interest in a given destination – not to speak of the educational and cultural value for the entire Aruban nation. On a similar note, I was a little dismayed to observe that there were no coordinated efforts on the part of tour-organizers to visit art spaces – from the Ateliers ’89 to Cas Cultura, individual studios, and the murals in San Nicolas. On the whole, there seems to be so much untapped potential in the arts for tourism development in Aruba. The visual arts community presently benefits from the vision and tremendous efforts of a handful of individuals, but more permanent solutions must be found if the momentum is not to be lost.
My two-week visit to Aruba gave me much to think about, and I am profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to interact with the artistic community in and around Ateliers ‘89.
I wish everyone I met there all the success and support they so richly deserve.
Dr. Therese Hadchity