Lara Dahlmann: Swamp Nights

Thursday 30 January, 2025, from 6.30 pm
Granderson Lab

 

Lara Dahlmann has been artist in residence at Alice Yard since the end of December 2024, working from Granderson Lab. On the evening of Thursday 30 January, she will present the results of her five-week creative and research residency, Swamp Nights.

She writes:

During my first visit to Trinidad in 2000, I was invited on a boat tour through the Caroni Swamp. That moment, as we slowly drifted past the mangrove forest, touched me and also left a lasting visual impression. The strange, almost dance-like beauty of the aerial roots is still vivid in my mind. In my artistic works, I engage with my surroundings, responding with site-specific installations. In this process, I have discovered paper as a sculptural element, both two- and three-dimensional. Over time, the drawings have gained autonomy, transitioning into cut-outs.

The tropical subject has always been metamorphic, meaning it is in constant change — a cycle of creation and decay. At Granderson Lab, I have used the space and time to create a site-specific installation that stages a dreamlike unreal state that, for me, interprets the melancholy and utopia of the tropical context.

All are invited. The installation can also be viewed from Friday 31 January to Sunday 2 February, by arrangement with the artist.

The evening will also include a reading of new creative work by writer Hassan Ali.


Lara Dahlmann lives and works in Hamburg. She studied at HAW Hamburg and received a travel grant from the DAAD to Trinidad. Her artistic development includes residencies in Buenos Aires, Curaçao, and Cape Town. In 2019, she participated in the Architektursommer Hamburg and was invited to the prestigious Thupelo Workshop in South Africa. In her works, Dahlmann engages intensively with her surroundings and the peculiarities of spaces, responding with site-specific installations.

Giorvana Hadeed: The Nypa Seed

Wednesday 11 September, 2024, from 6.30 pm
Granderson Lab 

 

On Wednesday 11 September, for one night only, artist Giorvana Hadeed will present new and recent works from an ongoing project, including a series of metal sculptures and a light installation.

The artist writes:

You never know what can come in with the currents… This ebony object, this Nypa seed, alluringly demands to be picked up. So enticing that it perfectly fits in the palm of your hand. So effortlessly gentle and smooth that its curves follow the fluidity of the oceans’ waves which delivered it to this beach. It appears to be delicate, fragile even. It can almost be perceived as helpless or wandering. But in that same instant its tenacity and fortitude discloses itself. Solid. It has the capacity to endure. Its bristles folding in on themselves as if to hold their narratives captive.
Portable, yet what does it carry?

All are invited.

About the artist:

Giorvana Hadeed (b. 1999, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is an artist based between Trinidad and London. She works primarily with sculpture and installation. Her practice explores ideas surrounding the sea, the Caribbean, and notions of the landscape. Having a particular allure towards metal, her work takes shape through methods of mapping and circularity. She holds a BA from Goldsmiths, University of London.

CUT, PASTE, STAMP, DRAW

(no laptop required)
A “making day” hosted by Alice Yard + SPEC*
Saturday 7 September, 2024, 12 noon to approximately 6 pm

 

Featuring the launch of SPEC* issue 2!

Following our UN|FOLD zinemakers’ meet-up in July, we're hosting an informal and very hands-on workshop/“making” session for anyone interested in DIY publishing. We’ll play with manual techniques and tactics for assembling a simple publication (zine, chapbook, poster) — no electronic hardware or software needed.

Bring your own texts, photos, and other collage materials — we’ll provide paper, pens, scissors, glue, tape, stamps, ink etc. Come and explore, share ideas, learn and teach by doing, try something new, get feedback, make friends.

Plus the SPEC* collaborative will launch the second issue of their zine! Grab a copy, have a conversation, listen to some tunes.

All are invited.

With practical support from the Mellon Foundation

Currency: field notes from Shanice Smith

Saturday 24 August, 2024 | 6pm 'til (Artist talk at 7pm)

Currency: field notes from Shanice Smith is the second installment of the piece Women are the currency of the day (2016). The earlier artwork consists of a suggestive image of a woman’s body, printed on local currency, prompting conversations about ‘body counts’ in relation to coded sexual references and access to women’s bodies. According to one of the three traditional ideals of masculinity—access to women’s bodies, having the respect of peers, and conventional measures of career/financial success)—the greater the number of conquests, the higher a man’s perceived security in his masculinity. Like ‘body counts’, the single dollar bill has very little value, but a stack of dollar bills is worth more.

Her latest piece centres the survivors of sexual violence, who retell their encounters. The installation consists of a thermal printer that reads out the survivors’ accounts. Eventually, the ink fades away; much like the instances of trauma and abuse, these stories become part of a repetitive cycle—you hear about them, you are troubled, but then you move on—sweeping it under the rug, or discarding it like an old receipt whose contents have faded long after a transaction has taken place.

All are invited.

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Shanice Smith’s work explores gender-based issues, with a focus on deconstructing and investigating violence faced against women and children within the Trinbagonian society. Through visual representations, she explores these themes using a mixed media approach—from video works, to found and discarded items, to performative or interactive gestures. Her main aim is that these works will function as a medium for open discussions. These encounters serve as motivation for her ongoing works and prompt conversations that create awareness and foster safe spaces for others to share their own stories, seeking to transform silence into a language of action. Her artistic inspiration stems from her own journey of self-discovery, interrogation, and more importantly, from her family’s history.

Apart from her personal practice, she is also the co-founder of Cousoumeh Collective. The Collective focuses on using participatory research methods via the act of cooking as a tool for interpersonal engagement. Within the Caribbean and its diaspora, food holds a lot of meaning as a way of showing care and building community. Both of Shanice’s practices work in tandem, becoming a reflection of each other - while her personal practice acts as a mirror, revealing parts of society we try to hide, the works done under Cousoumeh Collective offer a nurturing, healing approach to confronting the harsh realities that have been unveiled.

UN | FOLD

A zinemakers + small-scale publishers meetup

Hosted by Alice Yard + SPEC*

Saturday 27 July, 2024, 5 to 9 pm
Granderson Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont, Port of Spain

Writers, makers, publishers: join us for an informal meetup at the end of International Zine Month, to exchange ideas, experience, knowledge, and small-scale/non-commercial/handmade publications. See + listen, show + tell.

All are invited.

With practical support from the Mellon Foundation

It Go Have to Adjust. On Language as Parasite

Thursday 14 December 2023 (4:30 'til)
24 Erthig Rd, Belmont

IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST.

ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE

IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE is a living curatorial endeavour by SAVVY Contemporary deliberating on the parasitic nature of language.

If language is a parasite, we need to evolve one that is made up of a plurality of voices that we wish to see act for a shared future. If we are “participants in the future of our languages” (Ocean Vuong), how can we make space for more variants of influences in order to facilitate the right climate and conditions for subversive, liberating practices within art and publishing? If language is there to make space for our survival, can we find procedures for optimising our communication to aid the creation of networks that can parasitize towards the proliferation and development of liberating practices? 

SAVVY Contemporary is an artistic organisation, discursive platform, place for good talks, foods and drinks – a space for conviviality and cultural plurilog. As a public and independent organism in perpetual becoming, it is animated by around 25 members and a network of collaborators, co-creating community and communities it breathes with. SAVVY Contemporary situates itself at the threshold of the West and the non-West to understand their conceptualisations, ethical systems, achievements, and ruins. It develops tools, proposes perspectives and nourishes practices towards imagining a world inhabited together. 

The things I cannot say

Friday, 24 to Sunday, 26 November 2023, 5:30 - 9pm
24 Erthig Rd, Belmont

The things I cannot say

Mahrinna Shareef

‘The things I cannot say’ is a digital media exhibition at Granderson Lab in Belmont in collaboration with North Eleven, where Marinna Shareef explores her personal relationship with enmeshment, specifically the cycle some indo-Caribbean families can develop with their children, reflecting on strictness, lack of control and boundaries. The work deep dives into wanting to make a change and ‘stop the cycle’, something we often hear from children when addressing their parents when coming into adulthood. What does entail when our own brains wont let us remember our trauma? Shareef tries to ‘break the cycle,’ in her own way by performing a sort of funeral service for the things she cannot say, and says her goodbyes to this sort of hesitance. She simultaneously performs this Caribbean ritual for her grandmother in dealing with her death, and reflects on how she dealt with both trying to manage remembering her trauma while losing a motherly figure.

This work was created during Marinna Shareef’s The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective x Alice Yard’s Virtual Artist Residency in 2022. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to make this exhibition possible.

Transmission/distortion: A re-reading of C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins

Saturday, 10 June 2023, 12 noon to 5 pm*
24 Erthig Rd, Belmont

Transmission/distortion:
A re-reading of C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins

This upcoming Saturday, June 10th, you are cordially invited to join us at Granderson Lab for a re-reading session of C.L.R. James' renowned work, "The Black Jacobins," in the company of video artist and filmmaker Ésery Mondésir.

"When I arrived here three weeks ago, I was perplexed by the enthusiastic smiles that greeted me when people learned I was Haitian. It wasn’t the usual “poor Haiti” I have faced many times in other settings. Instead, the folks I encountered associated my homeland with ideas of pride, freedom, and justice. It struck me as peculiar until Christopher [Cozier] reminded me that C.L.R. James hailed from this very land. Suddenly, it dawned on me that Haiti, as both an idea and perhaps an ideal, had long been embedded within the ‘Trini imaginaire.’

As author Millery Polyné emphasizes in his work 'The Idea of Haiti,' there is no singular, unified notion of Haiti. While it may symbolize freedom, justice, and equality for the “the wretched of the earth,” the “brutes,” and the “rebels,” Haiti continues to stand as a "monstrous anomaly" in the face of colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy to paraphrase Nick Nesbit.

Which particular ideas of Haiti have permeated and continue to permeate Trinidad and Tobago? How do ideas diffuse through the intricate web of social and political contradictions? What are the mechanics of transmission or distortion of transformative ideas? How do we leap from revolutionary ideas to liberatory gestures that generate new ideals? Can we go beyond criticality? These questions and others will shape my residency at Alice Yard this spring.

On Saturday, we encourage you to bring your copy of 'The Black Jacobins.' We will engage in collective readings and invite you to share your favourite passages.

All are welcome.

*Readings may be recorded.