The Jean Pierre Sports Complex Centre used a galley
First of all, I am extremely pissed with CARIFESTA 9. All of the artists who have taken part should protest vehemently against exhibiting in such a space. Sadly going into the Jean Pierre Sports Complex and casting my eye on slap dashed white painted plinths and raw pipes gave way to my horror of the floor. The large tiled parquet was well trampled and as distracting as the walls. I felt so bad for the artists from the other Caribbean islands that I apologized on behalf of my island to anyone who would listen. The space is hot, the curating, non existant and walking out of Carifesta led me to shake my head and conclude that we are simply not ready. CARIFESTA 9 has had eight tries, why is it that something with so much promise, can be done so poorly! It is not as though we have no inkling about how to put on a show.
Why must everything look thrown together and unsure? Work from all over the Caribbean should suggests a biennale or triennale, showcasing the very best, or what is the whole point of it! Yet despite the heat, despite some countries having no names on the works or even a suggestion of where the work was from or what it was, I plodded on. I began to notice that the work from the rest of the Caribbean was quite strikingly different in subtle and not so subtle ways from the works of Trinidad and Tobago. The rest of the Caribbean is much more open to experimentation as well as moving away from solely representational works. The Suriname’s the French speaking islands and Barbados in particular had some strong representation. But as a friend of mine noted, when good work is put up in a bad way, it looks bad, and when bad work is put up alongside it, it also looks worse. For this show you really had to look, that is if the sauna conditions didn’t run you from the room. Temperature – hot, Work - tepid - Adele
A live performance
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