Versia Harris: They Say You Can Dream a Thing More Than Once

Thursday 21 November, 2013, 7.30 pm, at Alice Yard

Versia Harris is artist in residence at Alice Yard during November 2013. She has spent her time in Port of Spain revisiting and re-exploring two ongoing video animation projects, in conversation with Alice Yard’s network of collaborators.

On Thursday 21 November, at 7.30 pm, Harris will present these two works — A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes When You’re Awake and They Say You Can Dream a Thing More Than Once — in a large-scale installation at Alice Yard. All are invited.

Versia Harris writes:

“My work explores the fantasies and experiences of an original character. This character is introduced to Walt Disney animations and consequently layers what she desires from these animations onto her life, especially her physical self. Her perception of and her relationship with her world change, as she compares reality and fantasy.... I have created two narrative animations surrounding the chase of continuously unfulfilled desires. At Alice Yard, my intention was to revisit these animations and explore different and more engaging ways of presenting this story to an audience.”

About the artist:

Versia Harris is a Barbadian artist living and working in Weston, St James. She graduated from the Barbados Community College with a BFA in the Studio Art programme in 2012, with an award from The Leslie’s Legacy Foundation. She has previously participated in residencies at Projects and Space (Barbados, 2011), Fresh Milk (Barbados, 2013), the Vermont Studio Centre (USA, 2013), and Instituto Buena Bista (Curaçao, 2013).

This event is supported
by North Eleven.

Project 35 Volume 2

Selections from an international exhibition of artists’ videos, produced by Independent Curators International

Tuesday 12 November, 2013, 7.30 to 10 pm, at Alice Yard



Still from My Father Looks for an Honest City (2010), by Basim Magdy


Project 35 is an itinerant video exhibition selected by 35 international curators, and organised by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. First launched in 2010, it now includes a second programme of single-channel videos, again drawing from ICI’s extensive network of curators to trace the complexity of regional and global connections among practitioners, and the variety of approaches used to make video.

This new selection of 35 curators from six continents (including Alice Yard co-director Christopher Cozier) each chose one work for this compilation, touring September 2012 through December 2014.

On Tuesday 12 November, 2012, from 7.30 to 10 pm, Alice Yard will present an installation of selected works from Project 35 Volume 2 (to be followed by a second selection in January 2014).

These selected video works — by artists ranging from Turkey to the Bahamas, from Egypt to Brazil, from China to Norway — reflect on the intersections of routine and ritual, the mundane and the absurd, the possibility or impossibility of intelligible communication.

The occasion will also welcome Alice Yard’s current artist in residence, Versia Harris of Barbados.

All are invited.

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Project 35 Volume 2 is a traveling exhibition produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation; the ICI Board of Trustees; and donors to ICI's Access Fund.

Independent Curators International (ICI) connects emerging and established curators, artists, and institutions to forge international networks and generate new forms of collaboration through the production of exhibitions, events, publications, and curatorial training. Headquartered in New York, the organization provides public access to the people and practices that are key to current developments in curating and exhibition-making around the world, inspiring fresh ways of seeing and contextualizing contemporary art. Since it was established in 1975, ICI has worked with over 1,000 curators and 3,700 artists from 47 countries worldwide.