Celebrating Independent Mas

Friday 25 March, 2011, at 7 pm



Robert Young and Lupe Leonard of Vulgar Fractions will host an evening celebrating contemporary independent mas at Alice Yard. Featuring slideshows of images from Carnival 2011 and live entertainment, the event will include visual contributions from:

Cat in Bag Productions: Snake in the Grass
Vulgar Fractions: Coalition
Alice Yard Players: When Arima Rained
Generation Lion Jouvay: Cleanse
Mas Jumbies: Bourgeois

The Cloth 25 + Alice Yard Pop-up Shop, featuring clothing and design objects by Trinidadian designers, will also be open.

All are invited.

A conversation with Shani Mootoo

Thursday 24 March, 2011, at 7 pm


Shani Mootoo is an internationally acclaimed writer, artist, and experimental filmmaker. Born in Dublin of Trinidadian parents, she grew up in San Fernando and now resides in Canada. She is currently writer in residence at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.

She is the author of three novels: Cereus Blooms at Night (1996), He Drown She in the Sea (2005), and Valmiki’s Daughter (2008), as well as a collection of short stories and a book of poems. Her films have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Venice Biennale.

On Thursday 24 March, 2011, at 7 pm, Mootoo will read from her recent work at Alice Yard, and talk about her writing process and creative concerns. The programme will also include a screening of several of her short film works. Copies of her books will be available for purchase.

This event is a collaboration with Paper Based Bookshop.

All are invited.

Greta Mendez and Akuzuru: What Lies Beneath the Skirt of Globalisation? and A Poem for Desi

Thursday 17 March, 2011, at 7.00 pm



From a performance by Greta Mendez in Shimla, India, during Art Karavan International 2010

What Lies Beneath The Skirt of Globalisation? and A Poem For Desi are two performance works which integrate sculptural installation and movement to establish form.

Over the Carnival season, artists Akuzuru and Greta Mendez have been meeting at Alice Yard to construct and develop a collaborative narrative work, incorporating mixed multimedia and movement. Playing to their strengths, Akuzuru has contributed the installation and design, and Mendez the concept and text.

They write:

“The convoluted narratives of both works are connected by the interrogation and analysis of the human condition through the web of those persistent artificial webs and matrices that shroud the consciousness of the everyday.

“A visceral presentation that challenges the gaze of external participation, this multi-sensorial projection offers to restore the dormant calamity that plagues the mind.”

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes



From Vein (2009), a performance work by Akuzuru

About the artists:

Greta Mendez is a performance artist, dancer, producer, director, carnivalist, and choreographer. Originally hailing from Fyzabad, Trinidad, she moved to London very early in her life to expand her horizons in dance. Over her forty-year career she has performed and choreographed worldwide, including projects in Greece, India, Italy, and China. She has received the BP & National Westminster Dance and Mime Award, a New York International Film and Video Award, a Dance Fellowship from the Greater London Arts Council, and been awarded a Travel Bursary by the Arts Council. In April 2009, she presented her performance work Ndulgence at Alice Yard.

In 2010 Mendez participated in Art Karavan International, an initiative developed by Indian artist Inder Salim. She joined the Karavan in Shimla and journeyed on to Jammu, Srinagar, and Delhi. The central premise was to involve local Indian and international artists, to find a vehicle for common expression and common ground.
In her forthcoming Alice Yard presentation, she will share some of the work created, tell a few anecdotes, and introduce the work of artists from India, Serbia, and China.

Akuzuru is an experiential artist known for her many multi-layered performances and large sculptural-installation works, which have been shown internationally at venues in the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Interdisciplinary in approach, she creates intense experiences, working primarily in the natural environment in site-specific situations. She has presented and exhibited her work at Notting Hill Carnival in London, LIFT-London International Festival of Theatre, the 2nd Biennale de Martinique, and the Rockstone & Bootheel exhibition at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut. She has received a Commonwealth Fellowship Scholarship to Nigeria and a Commonwealth International Artist Residency to India, among other awards. In November 2009 she presented her installation and performance work Vein at Alice Yard.

All are invited.

Alice Yard Players: When Arima Rained

Detail of costume from When Arima Rained

“When Arima rained, soul-dears from the constellation of life showered breaths of light from a colourful night sky.”

Since 2007, siblings Lupe and Sean Leonard have produced a children’s Carnival masquerade band based at Alice Yard. Every presentation has attempted to sensitise young people to their environment, Trinidad and Tobago, by drawing reference to the culture, geography, flora, and fauna of their homeland. The costumes incorporate found and recycled objects from the natural and man-made environment.

The Alice Yard Players’ 2011 presentation is called When Arima Rained. Arima — which means both “place of the beginning” and “water” — is an indigenous Amerindian place name for what is now a large town in eastern Trinidad. The band’s mythical narrative attempts to bring these two definitions together, in three elements:


Canopy: Spectrum — The Night Cloud

Players: Soul-dears of Light

Character: Arima Night


For further details:

http://nimblett.no-ip.biz/kiddies/
Email: lupeleonard@hotmail.com
Telephone: (868) 490-8853

Vulgar Fraction: Coalition

Carnival 2011



Photographs by Arnaldo James

Vulgar Fraction, the independent mas band led by designer Robert Young of The Cloth, launched its Carnival 2011 presentation, Coalition, at Alice Yard on Tuesday 25 January. Coalition is a collaboration between Young and designer Lupe Leonard.

The designers explain:

“Coalition represents a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, within which they co-operate in joint action. While each individual serves his own interest at times, they have all come together for a common cause. However, since the alliance may have been formed as a matter of convenience, it may last only temporarily.”

Leonard has been producing children’s mas for approximately five years, while Young has maintained an almost fifteen-year presence “on the road” for Carnival.

“Vulgar Fraction has consistently advocated a return to true creativity, art and design for masqueraders”, says Young. “But the process becomes even more interesting when each person gets involved in designing and building part of their own costume themselves.”

Vulgar Fraction will provide potential masqueraders with a variety of design components they can use to decorate their costumes themselves — a practice similar to elements of the sailor mas tradition. (For further information, contact Robert Young at 471-2041.)

The Alice Yard launch included music by 3canal, Moyenne, tilla the sound boi killer, and North West Laventille Cultural Movement.

Wrestling with the Image

21 January to 10 March, 2011, at the Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC



Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions is an exhibition of contemporary art from twelve Caribbean countries, curated by artist and Alice Yard co-director Christopher Cozier and art historian Tatiana Flores. It opened at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, on 21 January, 2011, and runs until 10 March.

The participating artists include several from Alice Yard’s creative network or who have shown their work at Alice Yard in recent years. The exhibition e-catalogue, with essays by Cozier and Flores, designed by Richard Rawlins and published by Draconian Switch, can be downloaded here.



View of one of the galleries at Wrestling with the Image, featuring work by (on walls, left to right) Phillip Thomas of Jamaica, Jean-Ulrick Désert of Haiti/Germany, Rodell Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, and (floor) Marcel Pinas of Suriname. Photograph by Nadia Huggins



Toussaint et George (2010), by Nikolai Noel, from Wrestling with the Image. Courtesy the artist



Work by (left to right) Tonya Wiles of Barbados and Ebony Patterson of Jamaica. Photograph by Nadia Huggins

Mobile Portrait Studio: Lara Stein Pardo and Rodell Warner

Friday 14 January, 2011, at 7.30 pm



From Mobile Portrait Studio, Port of Spain, January 2011


Mobile Portrait Studio, a project by Lara Stein Pardo, considers people, public spaces, performance, and personal interaction in relationship to the role of portraiture, art-making, memory, and historical narratives. Mobile Portrait Studio ran in two locations in Miami in December 2010. The Port of Spain version is a collaboration between Stein Pardo and Rodell Warner.

On 11 January, 2011, Stein Pardo and Warner made a series of portraits of passersby on Ariapita Avenue in Woodbrook. In the second stage of their collaboration, they will operate the Mobile Portrait Studio at Alice Yard on Friday 14 January from 7.30 pm. Volunteer participants can have their portraits taken and will receive a free print. The images will be digitally preserved as part of a larger series of artworks.

Stein Pardo and Warner will also screen the portraits taken on 11 January, and engage in a conversation about the project, their other recent work, and their interest in portraiture.

All are invited.

About the artists:

Lara Stein Pardo is an artist and PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Michigan. She is currently a visiting researcher in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami and artist-in-residence at the Deering Estate in Cutler Bay. Her artwork, research, and writing revolve around place, gender, race, ethnicity, art, and artistic practice in the US and the Caribbean. She works in the medium of photography, installation, performance, and short film.

Rodell Warner is an artist and designer. His recent work includes the interactive installation Photobooth during Erotic Art Week 2009 and 2010, and the ongoing portrait series Closer. Other work in progress is documented at his blog, Free Paper. He is a member of Alice Yard’s network of creative collaborators.

From Mobile Portrait Studio, Miami, December 2010

A conversation with Richard Fung

Tuesday 11 January, 2011, at 7.30 pm



Still from Rex vs. Singh (2008)

Richard Fung is a Trinidad-born, Toronto-based video artist and writer. His single channel videos and projections have been widely exhibited and collected internationally, and his articles have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics. Fung has been a Rockefeller Fellow at New York University, and a visiting professor at the Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. He teaches at OCAD University.

On Tuesday 11 January, Fung will give a talk at Alice Yard about his recent projects and current work in progress. The event will include a screening of Fung’s recent video work Rex vs. Singh (2008; 29:25 minutes), made in collaboration with Ali Kazimi and John Greyson.

In 1915, two Sikh mill-workers, Dalip Singh and Naina Singh, were entrapped by undercover police in Vancouver, British Columbia, and accused of sodomy. This experimental video stages scenes from their trial, told four times: first as a period drama, second as a documentary investigation of the case, third as a musical agit-prop, and fourth, as a deconstruction of the actual court transcript. Rex vs. Singh was commissioned by the Queer History Project of Out on Screen, Vancouver Queer Film Festival.

All are invited.

For more information about the artist, see: www.richardfung.ca.