Alice Yard at documenta fifteen

 

From 18 June to 25 September, 2022, Alice Yard will participate in documenta fifteen, curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa.
 
Taking the lumbung — a communal rice barn typical in rural Indonesia — as a conceptual model, documenta fifteen is built around “principles of collectivity, resource building, and equitable distribution.”

When Alice Yard was invited to join the documenta fifteen lumbung and work alongside dozens of other collectives from around the world, the curators asked how we might “translate” what we do to a new physical location — the German city of Kassel — and a broader context.

What does Alice Yard do? For fourteen and a half years, from our founding in 2006, we were often described as an art space, based at Roberts Street in Woodbrook, Port of Spain. In February 2020, when we permanently relocated to Granderson Lab in Belmont, it was clear to us that Alice Yard is not merely a physical location, but a series of relationships and ideas, ways of thinking and working — not a project but a practice, not a programme but a process.

How do we translate this to documenta fifteen? Rather than inventing some unprecedented new spectacle, we have opted to do what we’ve always done: create a space, both physical and conceptual, to bring artists and others together to talk, experiment, exchange, and play, with an ethos of self-determination, generosity, spontaneity, and friendship.

During the 100 days of documenta fifteen, Alice Yard will host nine artists in residence at the WH22 venue, who will create and present site- and time-specific works and actions in diverse media at locations around Kassel. Building on relationships that, in some cases, stretch back to the earliest days of Alice Yard, these artists are:

18 June–2 July: Blue Curry
3–17 July: Luis Vasquez La Roche
5–19 July: Nicole Cecilia Delgado and Amanda Hernández
18–30 July: Shannon Alonzo
31 July–13 August: Versia Harris
14–28 August: Michelle Eistrup
29 August–10 September: Bruce Cayonne
11–25 September: Ada M. Patterson

We also look forward to welcoming other friends and collaborators to our space in Kassel for informal visits, interactions, and activations, some planned and some improvised.

Simultaneously, Alice Yard will present a series of works and actions in Port of Spain to extend the documenta fifteen conversation beyond Kassel.

During our time in Kassel, instead of concerning ourselves with whether or how an international audience may or may not understand our process, we prefer to ask ourselves: What do we make or do when no one is watching us? What do we talk about when no one else is listening?

The exact scope and content of our documenta fifteen participation are unknown to us now — these will take shape over the 100 days. To use one of our favourite phrases, there is no end in sight.

Follow us here and on social media, visit us in Kassel or Port of Spain, and join our conversation.

#AliceYardD15  #ayardexchange #documentafifteen

Artist in residence Pascale Monnin

Lena et Romy from Serie :: Histoire d'O :: O Stories (ink, acrylic on canvas, 150 x150 cm, 2022)

 

Since mid-January, Alice Yard has been hosting artist in residence Pascale Monnin at Granderson Lab in Belmont. This is our first international residency since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic almost two years ago.

During her time in Port of Spain, Monnin has been working on a series of works on canvas called Histoire d’O :: O Stories, while engaging in conversation with members of the Erthig Road community.

Due to current COVID-19 restrictions, Alice Yard is not able to host a public event or presentation of Monnin’s work in progress. However, anyone interested in meeting the artist and exploring this new work may contact us at helloaliceyard@gmail.com to arrange an informal private viewing on Thursday 10 February. (COVID-19 health measures will be in effect: all visitors to Granderson Lab must be fully vaccinated and masked at all times.)

Pascale Monnin’s residency at Alice Yard is part of a multi-year regional exchange organised by Le Centre d’Art in Haiti, with funding from UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity.

 

Idelmonde Youains from Serie :: Histoire d'O :: O Stories (ink, acrylic on canvas, 150 x150 cm, 2022)

About the artist:

Pascale Monnin was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1974 and was raised in Switzerland where she studied. She currently lives and works in France. This double culture nourishes a complex imagination that she uses in many techniques: she paints, sculpts, engraves copper, creates mobiles, and makes installations, and has shown her art around the world. She founded the cultural association Passagers des Vents in 2010, and with poet James Noël she launched the artistic and literary Review IntranQu’îllités in 2012.

The Galerie Monnin in Port-au-Prince, founded in 1956, is a family affair. Monnin was also artistic director of Le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince from 2014 to 2016.

She has exhibited at the Grand Palais, the Villa Médicis, Agnès B, the OAS Museum, the Waterloo Museum, the Fowler Museum, and Halle Saint-Pierre, among other venues, and she represented Haiti at the 2011 Venice Biennale. She has works in the collections of the MUPANAH (Musée du Panthéon National Haitian) and Le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, and other international museums and galleries.

Fifteen years later

 

Fifteen years ago today, on 15 September, 2006, Sean Leonard opened the driveway gate of the house at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, and welcomed us all in to a place he had decided to call Alice Yard, after his great-grandmother Alice Gittens. It was, that first evening, a simple Woodbrook backyard, paved with concrete, with a laundry sink in the corner. He had offered this backyard as a venue for the artist Jaime Lee Loy to present a new artwork, a video installation, and in subsequent weeks and months Sean continued to offer Alice Yard to his peers as a space to imagine, converse, and play.

Fifteen years later, imagination, conversation, and play are still our motive and our method. Over the past decade and a half, Alice Yard has worked (and played) with many dozens of artists, musicians, writers, dancers, maspeople, filmmakers, curators, and others. Some spent a short time with us, some lingered for a while, some never went away. A year and a half ago, we left that backyard in Woodbrook and relocated to Granderson Lab — the former Granderson Bros. printery — on Erthig Road in Belmont, on the other side of Port of Spain. The move put to a practical test our belief that Alice Yard is not, essentially, a physical site, but a series of ideas and relationships — a practice, a process — a space and not a place, extending through and beyond Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean to include interlocutors and fellow instigators dispersed geographically around the world, but connected by intentions and affinities.

We are driven by curiosities rather than ambitions. We keep going because others keep stepping up and stepping in with ideas and questions we want to grapple with. Sometimes we’ve wished to move very fast, and sometimes we’ve deliberately chosen to slow down. The past fifteen years have been inspiring, challenging, occasionally exasperating, and never boring. We continue to dream, improvise, and argue with an always changing constellation of friends, colleagues, neighbours, and antagonists — to all of whom we say thanks.

On 15 September, 2006, the one thing we perhaps could not imagine — or didn’t need to — was that we’d still be doing this fifteen years later. Then, there was no destination in mind. Now, we’re still not there yet, and we’re still full of questions. Nothing could be more thrilling.

T.V. to See the Sky

Inspired by Yoko Ono’s work, SKY T.V.
Monday 21 June, 2021, beginning at sunrise 5:42 AM Pacific Standard Time, and continuing for 24 hours

This event is inspired by Yoko Ono’s second conceptualization of SKY T.V. in 1967 for the Lisson Gallery, which she described as “a T.V. just to see the sky. Different channels for different skies, high-up sky, low sky, etc." SKY T.V. 1966 (furniture piece) was a video sculpture described by Ono as “a closed circuit T.V. set up in the gallery for looking at the sky.” It broadcasts a live video feed of the sky from above the building where it was installed — a way to bring the sky inside, even if a space lacked windows. In collaboration with Yoko Ono, the Getty Research Institute and the Feminist Center for Creative Work will present a 24-hour video streaming of the sky via Zoom. A network of international institutions will participate in a live broadcast of the sky transmitted to audiences at home. At a time of profound revolution and reflection, a time of restricted travel but great desire for connection, we seek to draw upon Ono’s invocation of the sky as a space of generative possibility and renewal as well as a territory beyond the reach of capital and ownership. The event takes place on 21 June, 2021 to coincide with and celebrate the Solstice and the Strawberry Moon Eclipse (June 20–24).

Registration link for attendees:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SRK9XUXLSQOd0lQi35yWWQ

Bruce Cayonne: Once Upon a Fete

Thursday 11 to Thursday 18 February, 2021, at Granderson Lab

 

During the month of February 2021, artist and sign painter Bruce Cayonne is in residence at Granderson Lab. Cayonne’s work spans over thirty years, and he is responsible for shaping a visual language unique to Trinidad and Tobago — the fete sign.

During his residency, in collaboration with Alice Yard, Cayonne will present a series of over twenty-five hand-painted fete signs — WASA, Army, Short Pants, Boxing Nite, Licensing, and more — recreating original signs from the 1990s from memory. The signs will be installed at Granderson Lab, and outdoors on Erthig Road, between Pelham Street and Norfolk Street.

Once Upon a Fete opens on Thursday 11 February and runs until Thursday 18 February, from 5 to 9 pm daily. Face masks are mandatory and COVID-19 safety protocols will be in effect.

 

About the artist:

Bruce Cayonne is an artist and sign painter based in Arima, Trinidad. He has been painting fete signs for the past thirty years. His iconic work has come to define the visual landscape and history of Trinidad and Tobago with his signature fete style — bold, precise lettering against colourful and vibrant gradient backgrounds, each sign hand-painted on hardboard and hammered onto lightposts. The signs promote upcoming events, from all-inclusive fetes to local markets and festivals. His work can also be found elsewhere in the Caribbean, in places like Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Guyana.
 
Over the past three decades, Cayonne has produced thousands of signs and has collaborated with numerous artists and musicians, such as DJs like Kabuki, Dr Hyde, Howie T, Foreigner, and Nyahbinghi, and visual artists like Christopher Cozier (T&T), Blue Curry (UK/Bahamas) and ds4si/Intelligent Mischief (USA). Once Upon a Fete is his first solo exhibition, featuring fete signs from the early 1990s to the late 2000s.

States of Confinement

26 to 29 November, 2020, at Granderson Lab

Curated by Adeline Gregoire 

States of Confinement seeks to explore the various states — physical, psychological, geographical, real or perceived as, and imagined — of confinement, experienced during the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020.

 

Upon examination of the colonial history of confinement/isolation and associated violence (ref. slave punishment archives, use of metal masks; isolation as torture) — are some societies more “ tolerant” of the confinement directive, while others more resistant (ref. US, EU protests as responses to the confinement directive) to what could be seen as another form of structural violence (carried out by the state)?

 

Could prolonged confinement/isolation/distance destroy social fabric? And what is this new normal and the new way of being? 

 

In as much as the exhibition is an attempt to document this critical period in time, the selection of works is meant to engage reflection on confinement as an accumulation of states: a geographic location; mental/psychological states; status quo; a preventative measure or method of control; a means to protect and save populations. Iterations of confinement (directed, self-imposed…) would be also examined, in addition to the possible ripple effects (re)created by confinement on individual, structural and societal levels.

 

Finally, the selected works hope to provide stimulus for a series of interrogations on relationships of the human-human/ human-system/human-nature; on themes of permanence vs. transience and metamorphosis.

 

Participating artists:

Shannon Alonzo / Sabrina Charran / Maria Diaz / Sarah Knights / Alicia Milne / Luis Vasquez La Roche / Rodell Warner

See web version here

States of Confinement / CULTUREEGO

OPEN from 5 to 9 PM  / 

 

Zane Rodulfo and Rodell Warner: Fractals

Tuesday 24 November, 2020, 8 pm, at Granderson Lab

 

Fractals is a live electro-acoustic, multimedia performance by Trinidadian drummer and composer Zane Rodulfo in collaboration with visual artist Rodell Warner. Using sensory percussion drum triggers to improvise with electronic sounds, Rodulfo will manipulate and trigger Rodell’s video artwork along with archival video. The videos will be projection-mapped on Granderson Lab’s building exterior by North Eleven. The public is invited to drive or walk by the building to experience the performance, while observing COVID-19 protocols.

The performance is made possible thanks to Granderson Lab, a project of Alice Yard, with support from CATAPULT | A Caribbean Arts Grant — a COVID-19 relief programme conceptualised by Kingston Creative (Jamaica) and Fresh Milk (Barbados) and funded by the American Friends of Jamaica | The AFJ (USA).

Zane Rodulfo is a Trinidadian drummer and composer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He completed graduate study in jazz studies at New York University and holds Bachelor of Music degrees in both jazz performance and ethnomusicology from the Oberlin Conservatory Of Music. He has opened for great musicians such as Stevie Wonder, and has performed at illustrious venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Blue Note. www.zanerodulfo.com

Amir Hall: Pray Daddy: The Prayer

Saturday 7 November, 2020, 7 pm, online
Supported by Alice Yard

Stand-up comedian, gaza man, college graduate, grieving son — these are the voices that echo throughout Pray Daddy: The Prayer, a digital freedom ritual that explores the liberatory power of embodied truth-telling and loving witness for folks of marginalized identity; the black, the poor, and the LGBTQ+.

A coming-out letter in spirit, this digital performance interrogates Amir Hall’s and his father’s experiences of conventional masculinity, challenging the bounds and permeability of gender as it operates in the Caribbean space. It is the cartography of a new man, the one unknown to us, the one that flies.

Pray Daddy: The Prayer, directed by Xoë Sazzle and collaboratively designed with Nigel Williams and Omar Jarra, with vocal training and performance by Stephanie Joseph, costume by Reuben Gonzales, styling by Suelyn Choo, and video by Elechi Todd, will be performed next on 7 November, 2020, at 7 pm AST (Trinidad)/6PM EST digitally via Twitch. Reserve your space here. Or tune in by clicking this link.