The Kingston Biennial: Part 2: Presences and Absences

While I have broader concerns about the current Kingston Biennial that pertain to the self-limiting manner in which the exhibition was conceived and curated, and the politics that have surrounded it, the exhibition itself is well worth seeing. In this second part of my review, I turn my attention to a few works of art in the Biennial that stood out to me, as well as a few things that I could not find.

Matthew McCarthy’s Sun System Radio, which combines sculptural form and sound, is one of the most remarkable pieces in the exhibition. As the catalogue entry on his work notes, his work revolves around Jamaica’s rich musical history, its social dimensions, and the relationship between its sonic and visual expressions. The soundtrack of Sun System Radio consists of a fictional radio programme in which various Kingston individuals were interviewed about what pressure means to them. The large, three-dimensional radio or speaker box wall form, however it is interpreted, comes alive as a fantastic, quasi-mythological figure, composed of undulating, interlocking, and morphing forms, claiming space for the narratives of pressure represented in a playful but uncompromising manner.

Photographic, video and digital work is strongly represented and used in several cases to present personal narratives about things that are often unsaid or unacknowledged. There are four photos by Marlon James (the photographer, not the writer), who now lives in Trinidad, that explore the taboo subject of male homosocial intimacy, through simple, common rituals of male friendship, solidarity, and bonding, such as lighting and sharing a spliff. The photograph’s dark, atmospheric quality, which evokes the interactions rather than to capture them in any detail, movingly portrays a culture that is very much part of everyday Jamaican life, even though homophobic insecurities often cause it to be denied or ignored.

Simon Benjamin’s two-channel video installation Errantry (2021) continues his ongoing exploration of the complicated and troubled relationship between Caribbean people and the sea, as it is negotiated on the coastal boundaries. Deftly mixing documentary and fiction, and sound, moving image, and object, the work is based on three months of research in Treasure Beach and his interactions with the fisherman Tommy and reflects on the precarious balancing act between survival and eking out a living, and engaging in environmentally nefarious fishing practices.

While McCarthy, James and Benjamin engage with social narratives of pressure, other artists present deeply personal, but no less relatable narratives, that speak about trauma and survival. Nadine Natalie Hall Heirlooms Unchained evokes her childhood experiences with sexual molestation and a seemingly indifferent and unresponsive mother – an all-too-common story in Jamaica – by means of carefully positioned evocative objects, such as her late mother’s handbag, an heirloom that signifies familial connection but also comes with painful baggage, as well as an empty chair and loose chains that suggest her release from that experience. The delicate white fibre globes that are suspended along with periphery of the installation add an uncanny, dreamlike quality and contradictory beauty to what could have been a cold and brutal scene, further signalling survival and transcendence.

Katrina Coombs’ Apocalypse, Lifting the Veil, a room-sized, immersive video and textile and fibre installation, also speaks about motherhood and trauma, and about the particular pain arising from the loss of an unborn or new-born child. Yet during the opening of the Biennial, the public response to the immersive, performative space was excited and even joyful. While probably also motivated by the prospect of a selfie photo-op, it was evident that visitors could not wait to take off their shoes to enter and engage with the space, and I saw several actually installing themselves quite comfortably in and around the womb-like fibre sculpture form in the middle of the installation. This tells us that Apocalypse, Lifting the Veil is a work for our times, that reveals and acknowledges deep trauma but also offers that soft, protective cocoon, that retreat into the womb and that sense of a healing community and communion that we all seem to need right now to become one with our pain and our loss and to find ways to move on.

There are other works of great merit in the inaugural Kingston Biennial but, as I argued in part 1 of this review, the exhibition is best understood as a conversation among the like-minded. What troubles me is the lack of any discordant voices in an exhibition which is, after all, about “pressure”. Adding an element of dissent, some dissonance and contrariness, could have been very revealing of all the different things that “pressure” can mean.

It is of note, from that perspective, that most of the artists included have advanced art training, most of them at master’s degree level, and that only one (Ricardo Williams) is self-taught, although he explores themes and a visual language that are familiar in contemporary black image-making. Co-curator Wayne Modest’s essay talks at some length about the “popular aesthetic of pressure” as a concern that is indeed central to exhibition theme and its currency in Jamaican life. The popular culture itself is however strikingly absent from the exhibition and represented only through the interpretative, theorizing and often aestheticizing lens of mainstream contemporary art. That is an unfortunate omission, as popular culture needed to be more actively present, and on its own terms, for the intended conversation about “pressure” as a Jamaican idiom to be complete.

Likewise, there is no evidence of those more conventional art practices that continue to hold their own in the Jamaican art ecology, and actually outperform contemporary art in terms of local art support. Such art, which retains its validity, used to be abundantly represented in past biennials, and the National Gallery’s 2019 Summer Exhibition. A more adventurous curatorial team might have selected some such work too, to add greater depth and nuance, and a greater element of tension and risk, to the curatorial conversations that an exhibition of this nature is supposed to instigate. That this was not done could also be seen as needlessly inflammatory in an art world which has been racked by divisions and exclusions in recent years. It is possible to be inclusive in exciting and innovative ways that do not compromise artistic and curatorial standards.

I heard through the art world grapevine that some of the invited artists declined, or dropped out, which may have skewed the ultimate list of artists away from what was originally planned. It appears, however, that the curators’ choices were largely informed by what was already within their field of vision, and that they selected artists with whom they were already well-familiar, and perhaps too familiar in some instances. I wish that more effort had been made to consider other possibilities. It is unfortunate that there was no call for submissions, as this would have expanded the pool from which the curators could select significantly. That there were always exciting surprises from new and unknown artists, who had never exhibited in Jamaica before, was one thing I really liked about the previous incarnations of the biennial, and there could have been a mechanism in its new dispensation to retain that possibility.

A few things are, however, more literally missing from the Kingston Biennial. Nicole Smythe-Johnson’s catalogue essay speaks at some length about work produced for the biennial by Afifa Aza and Ramon Knight and invites us to see it in dialogue with Nari Ward’s, yet it is nowhere to be found in the exhibition. Their names were not actually included when the exhibition list was finally published on 8 April 2022, so their absence was known some time ago. It would be good to know what happened and I suspect that there is an interesting back story there.

It appears that the curatorial team was under “pressure” too. But more about that next week.

Dr Veerle Poupeye is an art historian specialized in art from the Caribbean. She lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and works as an independent curator, writer, researcher, and cultural consultant. Her personal blog can be found at veerlepoupeye.com.