Video Caribx. Documenta fifteen. Kassel, Germany (2022)

Curatorial project with Ashleigh Deosaran

In order to expand the presence of Caribbean artists initiated by Alice Yard of Trinidad at Documenta fifteen, Ashleigh Deosaran and Luis Vasquez La Roche invite emerging artists from across the archipelago to share glimpses of their practices to be screened during La Roche’s residency in Kassel. A program of these short videos will document performances that have allowed these artists to hold, represent, and repair their communities on a microcosmic scale. They transgress hegemonic Spatio-temporal, material, and social boundaries through acts of relation, defying the Enlightenment holdover of individualism that continues to grip nations across the Global South against their better interests. The post-independence projects rooted in this ideology have failed, leaving Caribbean artists to occupy their ruins and model survival beyond the end of our worlds.

As Samanth Subramanian recently stated of ruangrupa’s practice and the curatorial ethos they bring to documenta fifteen, the goal is to “[propagate] the art of collaboration.” Propagating such an art in the conditions of the archipelagic Caribbean is a challenging, but crucial act of radical rhizomatic care not limited to the self-identified artist. These acts are countless and often unseen, including unabashedly queer communal expression; reenactments of ancestral tradition; formulations of new embodied epistemologies; and critical interventions into existing anti-Black, neo/colonial, and heteropatriarchal conditions; ecological collaboration and reconnection. Encompassing the everyday, intimate, and accessible manifestations of such acts, the videos featured in this program glimpse moments of communal engagement and solidarity amid ongoing collisions with broader socio-economic, cultural, and political hurdles. As a result, the collection is necessarily ambivalent and offers no conclusions- only further opportunities for engagement.

Artists:

Henri Tauliaut / Annabel Guérédrat / Yelaine Rodriguez / Natusha Croes / Patricia Encarnacion / Wasia Ward / Nadia Huggins / Gabrielle Francis / Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez  / Amir Denzel Hall / Kearra Amaya Gopee / Kelley-Ann Lindo / Mariana Parisca / Alex Kelly / Nikolai Noel / Xavier Kistow-Davis / Taya Serrao / Suelyn Choo


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