Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today
Oct 5, 2023 – Feb 25, 2024
Bridgitt and Bruce Evans and Karen and Brian Conway Galleries
Art from the Caribbean—a region of the Americas including the Caribbean Sea, constituted by more than 700 islands and landmasses, and nearby coastal areas—has been the subject of numerous group exhibitions since the 1990s, when debates around identity and difference featured front and center. The emergence of globalization and multiculturalism at that time led to profound social and political transformations even as the impact on the Caribbean and its stereotypical perception as an exotic tropical paradise was uneven and complex.
Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today takes the 1990s as its cultural backdrop, gathering artworks by 28 artists who live in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean heritage, or whose work is connected to the region. The exhibition is anchored in the concept of diaspora, the dispersal of people through migration both forced and voluntary. Here, diaspora is not a longing to return home but a way of understanding that we are always in movement and that our identities are in constant states of transformation. Challenging conventional ideas about the region, the exhibition reveals new ways of understanding the Caribbean as a place defined not by geography, language, or ethnicity, but by constant exchange, displacement, and movement.