...Krista A. Thompson Some critics contend that the visual language of abstraction or conceptual art cannot translate “Caribbeanness.” This essay considers the work of several contemporary Caribbean artists who highlight how the “picturesque” paintings so favored by detractors were historically...

... in Europe, is interpellated into the position of white other, or “whitey,” as she is called on the streets. It argues that McGilchrist's art constitutes a poetics or a “how” of stepping into and negotiating white identity as a place of recognition. The essay explores McGilchrist's visual engagement...

...Andrea N. Douglas Small Axe Incorporated 2004 Facing the Nation: Art History and Art Criticism in the Jamaican Context Andrea N. Douglas n the opening comments for the 2000 Annual National Exhibition, Michael Cooke, then director of museums for the Institute of Jamaica...

... appreciation of its essential virtue. Rather, friendship as a value to think and live with comes into view for me within a certain problem-space or conjuncture. And it is from within this historicized perspective that I want to reflect briefly on friendship as a dimension of an art of living . Part of what...

...). There are many thinkers whose work might provoke us here, but in this very brief note the author whose work will frame my discussion is the prolific art critic Terry Smith, who is now almost never not writing about, or explicating, the contemporary. 2 For him, the contemporary in art is the name of a diverse...

...Kobena Mercer Proposing Bakhtin's dialogical principle as a guiding light for cross-cultural studies in art historical research on the diasporic formation of Afro-modernism, Kobena Mercer's discussion essay highlights the value of his postformalist outlook as he responds to commentaries by Eddie...

...David Scott This essay reflects on the sources of Stuart Hall’s sensibility, in particular the sense of displacement that pervaded much of his work. [email protected] © 2023 by Small Axe, Inc. 2023 Stuart Hall Brown middle class irony art of living displacement Jamaica...

...Barbara Prézeau-Stephenson This article focuses on the visual arts in contemporary Haiti, providing a rare insight into the current creative context. Countering a customary focus on history painting and Vodou-inspired or magical realist work, it explores the evolution of artistic production over...

... ecocriticism environmental humanities Puerto Rico disaster Hurricane Maria What is the role of art amid climate disaster? This question has often been overshadowed by well-justified public attention to the state’s (in)actions in the face of environmental catastrophes. 1 Recent discussions of twenty...

... surrounding these works has conspicuously ignored any erotic potential inherent in them. Using the contemporaneous, mostly private homoerotic photographic archive of Archie Lindo as a point of entry, this essay questions and complicates the narrative surrounding nationalist-era art in Jamaica, particularly...

...Erica Moiah James Violence, trauma, and memory are fundamental factors of Caribbean modernity but have thus far been underexamined within art history and criticism. This essay explores the invisible yet palpable presence of violence in the genre of family portraiture and the contemporary...

...Roshini Kempadoo This essay is a contribution to the book discussion of Timed Out: Art and the Transnational Caribbean (2011) by Leon Wainwright. Kempadoo offers an exploration and commentary on the way Wainwright's publication has been structured and conceived, exploring the rationale...

...Leon Wainwright This essay reflects on the contribution made by Timed Out: Art and the Transnational Caribbean (2011) to alternative futures for the Caribbean-focused study of art and its histories. Wainwright emphasizes the need for better attention to the complex “geopolitics of time...

...Hortense J. Spillers In a reading of Huey Copeland's Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America , Spillers examines the stakes and implications of the work against the broader perspective of black artistic practices in the sociopolitical context of the United...

...Tatiana Flores; Michelle Stephens This essay argues for an archipelagic approach to the twenty-first-century visual arts of the insular Caribbean. While it is common for scholars to stress the region's heterogeneity, the authors seek out thematic continuities in the art of the Caribbean islands...

...Wendy Knepper Small Axe Incorporated 2006 Colonization, Creolization, and Globalization: The Art and Ruses of Bricolage Wendy Knepper Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces...

...Veerle Poupeye This paper examines the Intuitives concept and the controversies that have surrounded this artistic genre in Jamaica. It argues that Intuitive art, as it has been defined by the National Gallery of Jamaica, constitutes a specialized canon within the national canons, rather than...

...” as a locus of embodied visual practices—with a significant, if often mysterious past—and debates Krista A. Thompson's notion of an “eye for the tropics” by reference to recent art historical insights drawn from fieldwork in Trinidad. Small Axe Incorporated 2008 BOOK DISCUSSION: An Eye for the Tropics...