Geoffrey Holder: Painter

Geoffrey Holder (whose work also appears on the covers of this issue) was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1930. A true polymath, he was a painter, photographer, choreographer, director, costume designer, dancer, actor, and composer. In 1953, during his early twenties, he relocated to New York City, a move financed by the sale of his paintings, and by 1956 he would receive a Guggenheim fellowship in painting, the medium most constant and central to him throughout his life. As a visual artist, his works evidence a singular and recognizable spirit of combined calm, elegance, and life force. He brought a controlled intensity to the way he portrayed his subjects, who are often visually isolated in the frame yet possess a presence that fills the image. Holder died in New York City in 2014.

Erica Moiah James is an art historian, a curator, and an associate professor at the University of Miami. Her research centers on Indigenous, modern, and contemporary art of the Caribbean, the Americas, and the African diaspora. In 2020 she received the Warhol Foundation / Creative Time Art Writing Prize and was also awarded research grants from the Mellon and Terra Foundations. In 2022 she curated Didier William: Nou kite tout sa dèyè, at MOCA-North Miami, and Nari Ward: Home of the Brave, at Vilcek Foundation NYC, and she was the 2023–24 Clark-Oakley Fellow at the Clark Art Institute. Her book After Caliban: Caribbean Art in the Global Imaginary is forthcoming from Duke University Press.