Come With It, Black Man

A documentary on calypsonian Black Stalin

Thursday 31 January, 7 pm, at Alice Yard

Filmmaker Tamara Tam-Cruikshank will host a screening of her documentary film Come With It, Black Man: A Biography of Black Stalin’s Consciousness at Alice Yard, followed by an informal conversation. All are invited.

Read a review of the film by B.C. Pires in the Trinidad Guardian here.

Collaborative Gestures

WDD25/The Cult of the Woman

Saturday 19 January, 2 to 7 pm, at Alice Yard

On Saturday 19 January, Alice Yard will host two informal events examining creative collaboration:

From 2 to 5 pm, the We Does Draw group will meet with artist Christopher Cozier for a conversation about his Development Patterns project, which invites open participation in his upcoming exhibition In Development at David Krut Projects in New York.

From 5 to 7 pm, Barbadian artist Shanika Grimes — currently artist in residence at Alice Yard — and her Trinidadian counterpart Michelle Isava will present the collaborative performance The Cult of the Woman, investigating “how women indoctrinate other women into submission to men” and the relationship of food and gender roles in both Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

Both events are open to the public and all are invited.

More Than Just a Place to Sit

An exhibition of new objects by Marlon Darbeau

11 to 15 December at Granderson Lab (a project of Alice Yard), 24 Erthig Road, Belmont

Designer Marlon Darbeau will show his Peera for the first time in Trinidad and Tobago, along with other new design objects, at Granderson Lab in Belmont. First shown in the Global Africa Project exhibition (2010) at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Peera is a reinterpretation of a familiar and ubiquitous little bench. Usually made by their users and constructed out of wood, peerahs are used for sitting on, and as a step up to reach items on a shelf. Says Darbeau, “I remember seeing my father sitting on a peerah while polishing his shoes or while painting the mailboxes he made. To this day he still has two of them.” 

Combining aluminium and cedar, Darbeau’s Peera is a contemporary and beautifully designed interpretation of a very mundane object. Writing on the Interior Design blog, one critic commented: “It is wonderful to see such forward-thinking design coming from parts of the world that the design world traditionally glazes over; Darbeau’s work is locally inspired, locally functional, and beautifully combines smart design aesthetics with local resources.”

More Than Just a Place to Sit: An Exhibition of New Objects by Marlon Darbeau opens on Tuesday 11 December, 2012, 7 to 9 pm, and continues from Wednesday 12 to Saturday 15 December, 11 am to 6 pm daily, at Granderson Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont.

Alternative Open Studio 2012

For two days in December 2012, Alice Yard will host an Alternative Open Studio event, featuring work by four Trinidadian designers working in jewellery, fashion accessories, and woodwork.
This is a satellite event of the Style Spirit Fashion Weekend 2012.

Friday 7 December, 4 to 9 pm
Saturday 8 December, 10 am to 5 pm

For more information, contact:
Janice: 769 0771
Lupe: 490 8853
Jade: 325 8524
Richard: 726 4010

The Ballad of Francisco Bobadilla

An installation by Marlon Griffith

31 October to 2 November at Granderson Lab (a project of Alice Yard), 24 Erthig Road, Belmont

Artist’s conversation on 3 November at Alice Yard, 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook

V.S. Naipaul’s 1962 travel narrative The Middle Passage begins with his return to Trinidad on board “the Spanish immigrant ship Francisco Bobadilla.” Marlon Griffith borrows the name of the vessel for his new installation project, which runs for three consecutive nights (Wednesday 31 October to Friday 2 November, 7 to 10 pm) at Granderson Lab in Belmont (a project of Alice Yard).

In The Ballad of Francisco Bobadilla, Griffith explores the experience of returning to Port of Spain — and the Belmont neighbourhood where he grew up — after an absence of three years. The artist contemplates the ways the city has changed, the ways it hasn’t, and how his own work changes in different geographical and social contexts. It involves “learning to be comfortable in an uncomfortable place.”

On Saturday 3 November, from 7 pm at Alice Yard, Griffith will discuss the evolution of the project and his recent work, in conversation with Christopher Cozier. The evening will also mark Alice Yard’s 6th anniversary as an independent space and network for experiment and collaboration.

All are invited.

Images above: details from the artist’s sketchbook 

Allen Prize fundraiser

The Allen Prize for Young Writers is a programme supporting budding writers aged 12 to 19 in Trinidad and Tobago. On Saturday 27 October, from 9 am to 2 pm, Alice Yard will host an Allen Prize fundraising event:

100 Years after Independence (Not Ours)

A conversation with Tatiana Flores

Tuesday 28 August, 7.00 pm

Zapatistas at Rest, by Fernando Leal (1922, oil on canvas)


Tatiana Flores, Alice Yard’s current researcher in residence, is an art historian and curator, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She specialises in twentieth-century Latin American art and contemporary art. Her first book project examines the development of avant-gardism in post-revolutionary Mexico, in relation to the Estridentista (“Stridentist”) movement, which encompassed art and literature. She is also active as an independent curator, and was co-curator with Christopher Cozier of the 2011 exhibition Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions (Washington, DC).

On Tuesday 28 August, Flores will give an informal talk at Alice Yard on the development of modernism in Mexico, one century after independence and immediately following the Mexican Revolution. It ponders the place of the arts in a postcolonial and socially agitated context, and offers a creative revisioning of the period typically known as the “Mexican Renaissance.” In her conversation with the audience, Flores will consider parallels with circumstances in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago.

All are invited.

A public intervention by Estridentistas in Xalapa, c. 1926: car parked on the steps of the city cathedral

GPS / A conversation with Carlos Garrido Castellano

Tuesday 21 August, 7.00 pm

From Cosas del Corazón, by Pascal Meccariello

GPS: Video Art from the Caribbean is a series of seven video works curated by Carlos Garrido Castellano and Dagmary Olívar Graterol, first shown in Madrid in March 2012, as part of the International Congress on the Caribbean.

The curators write:

“... a GPS is a system that helps us to locate directions, spaces, and, in that way, to place ourselves spatially. Elaborated with the most advanced technology by international enterprises, a GPS seems to be the ideal tool to measure the increase of mobility and connectivity in the present moment. But a GPS is not infallible. Its accuracy depends on so many factors: the person who listens, the position of the satellites, an updated model, and some local adjustments made by local governments in order to elaborate cartographies of small, otherwise inaccessible spaces.

“From that position, GPS intends to approach the visual creativity of the region by showing the work of seven artists who share an interest in questioning the position of the self and the society in a changing context ....”

GPS will be shown at Alice Yard for one evening, on Tuesday 21 August, and Garrido Castellano will lead an informal conversation about questions such as:

= How “responsibility” can be articulated from the present perspective, and how can it be linked to a expanding, changing context.
= How to measure initiatives developed by artists concerning their relations with the public and institutions across the Caribbean.
= How ideas of place and diaspora have been changed by the inclusion of digital technology in the artistic process.

All are invited to join the conversation.

Carlos Garrido Castellano is an art historian specialising in Latin American and Caribbean art, and an assistant professor at the University of Granada in Spain. He has done long-term research stays in countries like India, Jamaica, Serbia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Martinique, and Puerto Rico, and he is the author of the book Arte en Diálogo: Conversaciones sobre práctica artística contemporánea, identidad e integración cultural en República Dominicana. He is currently researcher in residence at Alice Yard.

From Let’s Punish Your Body, by Lázaro Saavedra

Artists included in GPS:

= Joëlle Ferly (Guadeloupe), A MazeD, The Strange Fruit
= María Elvira Dieppa (Colombia), Waiting Room
= Pascal Meccariello (Dominican Republic), Cosas del Corazón
= Sheena Rose (Barbados), Town
= Lázaro Saavedra (Cuba), Let’s Punish Your Body
= Argelia Bravo (Venezuela), Biografías encubierta
= María Teresa Díaz Nerio (Dominican Republic), Homenaje a Sara Bartman