FRAMEWORK PANEL #20

Contemporary Art in the Caribbean

Wednesday, May 14, 2014 | 12 – 1:30pm

Art Museum of the Americas,
Organization of American States
201 18th St., Washington, DC
Gallery 5, 2nd Floor

Attendance is FREE!

Transformer continues our ongoing FRAMEWORK Panel Series with FRAMEWORK Panel #20: Contemporary Art in the Caribbean. This panel will highlight emerging Jamaican & Trinidadian artists perspectives on current trends and best practices by Caribbean based artists & arts organizations, with additional insight from scholars and curators specializing in the contemporary art work of the region.

Panelists include: Deborah Anzinger, NLS Kingston (Kingston, Jamaica); Marlon James, artist, (Trinidad); Leasho Johnson, artist, (Jamaica); and Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Float curator & former Senior Curator of the National Gallery of Jamaica. The panel will be moderated by Erica Moiah James, Professor of Art History and Africana Studies at Yale (New haven, CT).

This panel is presented in tandem with the launch of the Float exhibition at Transformer, May 17 – June 21, 2014. Organized in collaboration with Jamaican based non-profit NLS Kingston, and curated by Nicole Smythe-Johnson, Float features photography, sculpture and mixed media work by four dynamic, emerging Jamaican & Trinidadian artists: Deborah Anzinger, Rodell Warner, Leasho Johnson, and Marlon James. Through their work, the artists’ redefine the physical and social boundaries assigned to them, positing a renegotiation of identity, insistent on the recognition of the invisible but central role that “margins” play in the making of our cosmopolitan present and future.

Launched in December 2002, Transformer's FRAMEWORK Panel Series engages DC, national, and internationally based artists, arts professionals, and cultural leaders in conversation with DC artists and audiences providing an oral 'field guide' to encourage and support individual emerging artists in our community, and to educate audiences through the sharing of best practices within the contemporary visual arts. Transformer presents our FRAMEWORK Panels 2-3 times per year via collaboration with a broad range of educational & cultural institution partners. Transformer is very honored to present FRAMEWORK Panel #20: Contemporary Art in the Caribbean in collaboration with AMA I Art Museum of the Americas of the OAS.