The Cutting Edge of the Periphery Calling: Artist

Initiatives in the Caribbean

“My body (I cannot help it) is not plunged into a single specified space. It works in
Euclidean Space, but it only works there. It sees in projective space; it touches,
caresses, and feels in a topological space; it suffers in another; hears and
communicates in a third, and so forth, as far as one wishes to go. My body is not
plunged into a single space, but into the difficult intersections of this numerous
family, into the set of connections and junctions to be established between these
varieties. This intersection, these junctions, always need to be constructed.”

(Michel Serres, ‘Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy’, Maryland: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1983, p. 44-45.)

Only over a relatively short period of time that we have started talking
about new perspectives such as World Art Studies, Global Art Studies and
non-western art, within the discourse around the practice of art history.
We are questioning our western position within the global picture and are
looking for a new vocabulary that is not blemished with burdened
connotations to shape these matters into new forms. In a country like The
Netherlands, topics like ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘multicultural society’ have
entered the art field. A complex history of immigration has been the blind
spot of the Dutch art world for a long time. Citizens that have their origins
in former colonies, guest laborers who entered the country from the ’50s
and ‘60s, and the economic and political refugees who found their way
into Dutch society over the last two decades, are all subject to that
complexity. Recently, these groups have started to appear into the scope
of the (g)local art world, rooted in political (correct) policies that put
pressure on a field that is depending on subsidies and funding.

At present, there are plethora of policies designed to promote Dutch visual

artists, curators and art administrators from African, Middle Eastern, South
American and Asian backgrounds, but they are having the opposite effect
to the one intended. They often result in a lazy, pigeonholing approach by
art organizations, and an increasingly frustrated community of art
practitioners who just want to be judged on their merit. These schemes
are constantly ‘framing the framer’, forcing the artist into a position that
accommodates the constructed view of west opposite to the rest,
assuming that they produce ‘culturally diverse’ and ‘authentic hybrid’ art
and that they exist simply to encourage people with non-western
backgrounds to visit museums and galleries. The artist finds himself in
what Foucault would call a heterotopia of deviation that is hard to escape
from.

Looking at young emerging artists attending the famous Dutch post-

academic Rijksacademy, coming from countries all over the world, I see
them embracing all the possibilities the institute has to offer in terms of
technological facilities and networking possibilities and, on the other hand,
struggling with the frame that is forced upon them. At the same time,
within the framework called the contemporary art world, or what we tend
to call ‘the mainstream’, one finally feels the need to address to a world
that has changed a long time ago, if we had only looked out of our
window, but the methodology lacks a clear view on so many levels.
Meanwhile, former colonies like Indonesia and Suriname that became
independent decades ago, more or less have been able to develop their
burdened history into a complex cultural identity that integrates past,
present and hope for the future within their hybrid societies, in an ongoing
process and in a cultural revolt opposed to Fanon’s call for cleansing
violence. But the process of post-colonialism has another countenance to
former colonies entangled in a dance of autonomy and heteronomy,
economically and politically depending on the metropolitan.

The island of Curacao, the main island of the Dutch Antilles, is still
entangled in that postcolonial dance. The implications of that dance are
quite disastrous for the development of a fundamentally rooted cultural
identity. Curacao would like to be independent, but how to survive as a
small country with so little natural resources and torn between the
historical link with the mainland, Venezuela, and at the same time
depending on supplies from the US. And then, that deeply rooted link with
their former colonizers in Europe… According to the local government, the
island is inhabited by over 102 different nationalities, on a population of
140,000 people. One could learn a lot from if we took a closer look and be
able to have a distance of all prejudices that cloud the view.

The constellation called the Dutch Antilles consists of six islands that are
only tied to each other because of their relation to the motherland, The
Netherlands. The islands do not have a lot in common, if one takes a
closer look. For the Dutch, this part of the kingdom very often only seems
to be a dip into paradise, ignoring the local issues and the historical role of
their nation. At the same time, they are regarded by a majority of the
Dutch as the ‘islas inùtiles,’ as Spanish explorer Alonzo de Ojeda described
them when he discovered the islands in 1499.

From the modernist avant-garde and the radical movements in the 1960s
to today, artists have been experimenting with tactics and theories,
inventing new forms of practice as a sort of ‘criticism from within’ to
engage with societal issues and futures. Against this background, the
Instituto Buena Bista, a center for contemporary art, started on Curacao in
2006 as an artist initiative of two visual artists who have their roots on the
island, David Bade and Tirzo Martha. Bade, born on Curacao into a Dutch
family, developed himself in the international mainstream and is regarded
on the island as ‘colonial import’. Martha, born and raised on Curacao as a
real ‘yu di Korsou’ (child of Curacao) also with an international career in
the art field, that is, within the ‘frame’ of the exotic Caribbean artist.

Trying to build a structure and strategic that would fill the enormous gap
they were experiencing in the field of the arts on the island, they founded
the institute build on three main pillars: an orientation course for young
talents they scout on the island; two residency programs for both Dutch
and international guest artists; and a research and development program
to build a firm structure on which contemporary art can develop its shape,
integrating all underlying issues. On an island that was lacking a reliable
infrastructure for contemporary art, one has to work on many levels and
once started, there are a multitude of responsibilities. Moving step by
step, at a certain point it is unavoidable to take all the different aspects
attached to it into account.

Their first concern was the absence of a new, young generation of artists.
While having done several projects with the community for over three
years prior to the start of the institute with their former foundation called
ArteSwa, they had encountered many creatively-gifted young people that
had nowhere to go, mainly because of a lack of knowledge, economical
support and a local art field that remained very local. In the land of the
blind, One-eye is king. And “the damned circumstance of water
everywhere”—as the Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera put it so strikingly in his
poem ‘La isla en peso’—makes it easy to stick to the safe inward view.

For some parts of the community, contemporary art is still considered to

be an upper-class occupation. The local governments’ main focus is on
‘the authentic’ cultural background of what they call the genuine Curacao
inhabitant and his cultural identity. If one looks at this policy closely, it
seems to be about cultural propaganda that is comparable with the art
that appears before the footlight in many non-Western countries, sold to
tourists as ‘authentic’ art, and which seems to be closer to folklore and
artisan art than to the development of a healthy soil for contemporary
ways of expression. Trying to break through these highly defended walls
from an underground art platform brings you to whole new ways of
dealing with art practice.

In an attempt to address to all these facts, the institute’s structure –

arriving from the periphery – has developed into a successful springboard
for contemporary art that tries to give an answer to the gap and plants
seeds for this healthy soil: over 30 artists have been visiting the institute
over the last four years: eleven former IBB students are currently studying
at art academies and applied art schools abroad, seven more following
them this year; and instead of the maximum of 15 students per school
year, they are admitting they have expanded to 20 and are researching
the possibilities for an accredited art academy on Curacao. Once the
possibilities are there within reach, the plants start growing far above your
head, like Jack and the Beanstalk, and there is a new view from that new
level. A ‘buena bista’. Although it must be said that it is not at all an easy
task to connect to all the complicated structures that lie behind the
layered construction of this postcolonial society.

In the periphery of the contemporary art world, many of these artist

initiatives are starting to appear, especially if we look closely at the
Caribbean and Central American art field. Circumstances comparable to
the situation on Curacao in terms of political, economic and social
backgrounds seem to be a very fertile soil for artists—that are either
successful or not in the western mainstream—to create underground
structures that not only give a base to their own practice but also derive
from a basic need to connect and educate. Here, ‘glocalization’ is working
at its best—, taking matters into their own hands and connecting, not only
the local community, but also inviting the mainstream to have a closer
look. No longer accepting to be framed within the framework of the exotic
‘other’, but moving forward from their own context, on their own terms,
and without leaving their local responsibilities behind. Platforms like
Alice’s Yard Space founded by architect Sean Leonard on Trinidad;
Suriname artist Marcel Pinas and his recently founded Tembe Art Studios;
Elvis Lopez’ Ateliers ’89 on Aruba; John Cox’ Popop Studios in Nassau; but
also art and theory laboratory Bèta Local in Puerto Rico that started seven
months ago; and private initiative TEORèTica in Costa Rica that had an
unutterable role in the development of the arts in the whole of Central
America over the last ten years; and many more, all have proven that the
Caribbean art world is moving autonomously in the contemporary art field.

The new world art history might not have been written, yet it is being lived
all around the world and ‘the rest’ is not waiting for ‘the west’ to give
them a right to exist. The cutting edge of the periphery is calling…

Nancy Hoffmann
The Netherlands, June 24, 2010
Nancy Hoffmann is the director for the Instituto Buena Bista – Curacao Center for Contemporary Art in
the Dutch Antilles, art-historian, and independent critic and curator.