'The Visual Life of Social Affliction' is a traveling exhibition featuring 11 artists from the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora around the depiction of social suffering. With works that are sometimes poignant, but also full of beauty and hope, the artists engage with the long experience of violence and loss in the region.
The exhibition departs from the recognition that Caribbean societies have emerged from indigenous genocide, enslavement of Africans, and forced labor of Hindus and Javanese under colonial regimes - a history of structural violence whose impact on social life is still felt today . The exhibition tries to capture in images the deep impact of these surviving power patterns on people's lives.
The Visual Life of Social Affliction is a project by Small Ax, international journal for Caribbean art criticism. The name 'Small Axe' is derived from a Jamaican saying made famous by Bob Marley: “If you are a big tree, we are a small axe”. It inspired the idea behind Small Axe that relatively marginal creative and critical voices can make a difference by staying engaged with people of Caribbean background and the changing contexts in which they live.
For this Small Axe project, new work was created by artists Blue Curry (Bahamas/London), Florine Démosthène (Haiti/New York), Ricardo Edwards (Jamaica), Deborah Jack (Sint Maarten/Jersey City, NJ), Patricia Kaersenhout (Netherlands), Miguel Luciano (Puerto Rico/New York), Anna Jane McIntyre (Canada), René Peña (Cuba), Marcel Pinas (Suriname), Belkis Ramírez (Dominican Republic), and Kara Springer (Barbados/Toronto). Ten writers from the Caribbean diaspora were invited to write about the artists for the accompanying publication. David Scott and Erica Moiah James curated the exhibition.
Project Wiaspora x TENT: podcast conversations
In this podcast series we investigate Gyonne Good hope, Richard Kofi and Simone Zeefuik started with various guest speakers what 'being Caribbean' means in different Dutch cities. The conversations take place in TENT and are te listen to via Project Wiaspora op Spotify.
This project was made possible by the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York. This European edition of the exhibition is a collaboration between TENT and the Research Center for Material Culture / Wereldmuseum Rotterdam.
Photos were taken by Aad Hoogendoorn and Jarmil Martis.