Annalee Davis - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Annalee Davis
frieze, 2019
Jesse Connuck locates the recipe as the site where hidden systems of colonialism and knowledge in... more Jesse Connuck locates the recipe as the site where hidden systems of colonialism and knowledge intersect in artworks by Congolese Plantation Workers Art League & Renzo Martens, Annalee Davis, and Torolab in this frieze 2019 issue No. 205 titled THE FOOD ISSUE.
Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 2008
The Forager magazine, 2016
This article was commissioned by and originally appeared on The Forager Magazine's online platfor... more This article was commissioned by and originally appeared on The Forager Magazine's online platform in 2016. Based in Bangalore, India, Forager was a journal of food as a cultural practice and political issue. The photo essay speaks to a suite of photographs collectively titled "Sweeping the Fields" and acknowledges the possibility of a post-plantation apothecary.
I met the editor, Deepa Bhasti, while we were both on an artist residency at Delfina Foundation in the Summer of 2016. She invited me to contribute to the e-issue under the theme, Passage. Photo credits with thanks to Helen Cammock. The magazine has since closed.
THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros. , 2015
THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros. The "tropical” has he... more THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros.
The "tropical” has helped to increase visibility in the global art market for contemporary art produced in Latin America (particularly from the Caribbean, Central America, and Brazil). Its vibrant, colorful, and extravagant iconography can be easily read by a broad audience. On one hand, the tropical can empower a worldview that is different from the “western” mainstream that dominates the global art world. On the other, it can be accused of reproducing an exotic colonial gaze that has historically constructed the tropics as only a place of desire and leisure. Has the tropical become a contemporary aesthetic trend that continues to primitivize the “Other”? How has the Latin American art market boom contributed to promoting a particular form of legibility for practices made in tropical climates? Can the tropical be a useful artistic strategy today or is it condemned to banality?
Provocation by Carla Acevedo-Yates and Cristiana Tejo
https://www.coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/debate/contribution/stretching-tropical
Open Arts Journal, Issue 5: Sustainable art communities | Contemporary creativity and policy in the transnational Caribbean, 2016
After more than four and half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significa... more After more than four and half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significant juncture, pondering what sustainability looks like in a region where the needs of visual artists outstrip the capacity of the environments they live and work in. As a social practice art project with a vision exceeding its financial means, Fresh Milk (FM) seeks a model that acknowledges the local and regional context. It is committed to expanding the critical arena, asserting itself in a way that is not driven by the market or by external forces out of sync with its own agenda. In the quest for sustainability, FM questions how a small, artist-led initiative might continue to respond to the needs of local contemporary visual artists. A new model is required to allow spaces like FM to maintain their intellectual and creative independence and become less vulnerable economically. What is a viable model for a social practice, artist-led project like FM that may contribute to strengthening healthy cultural ecosystems locally and in the Caribbean? This articles merely shapes the contours of such a model.
ARC Magazine, 2012
On May 25th, 2012, Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins of ARC magazine in collaboration with Medulla Ar... more On May 25th, 2012, Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins of ARC magazine in collaboration with Medulla Art Gallery in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, presented a panel of five women who were invited to speak about Trinidad-based, Jamaican metalsmith and sculptural artist, Jasmine Thomas-Girvan’s work. The panel included Melanie Archer, editor of Robert & Christopher Publishers and art director of the trinidad + tobago film festival; Gabrielle Hezekiah, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at UWI, St. Augustine; Sharon Millar, Trinidadian writer; Marsha Pearce, scholar, artist and Ph.D. candidate at UWI, St. Augustine and myself. We were asked to respond to the December 2011 solo exhibition at the Y Gallery – ‘Gardening in the Tropics’ by Jasmine Thomas-Girvan.
What follows is an edited version of the paper I presented in Port-of-Spain and which was published in the online platform, ARC Magazine.
As co-organiser of Caribbean Linked III alongside ARC Magazine and Ateliers ’89, I share my repor... more As co-organiser of Caribbean Linked III alongside ARC Magazine and Ateliers ’89, I share my report which reflects on a long-time dream of mine to realize a regional residency that offers a thriving environment for Caribbean artists to meet, bond and recognize themselves in one another across cultural and linguistic boundaries while allowing for serious contemplation on the issues our islands face. The article was published in August 2015 on ARC Magazine’s website.
As the founding director of The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., I was invited to participate in the... more As the founding director of The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., I was invited to participate in the 18th International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil – 30 Years + Southern Panoramas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Videobrasil has established itself as one of the most important organizations for video and contemporary art practices in the geopolitical South and included a cross section of curators and critics from arts institutions worldwide, and artists largely from the global South. I presented in the 3rd Focus group of the festival’s public programming, which centered on artist residencies. The following is an edited version of my presentation ‘Unrecognised Affinities’ delivered at the panel titled ‘Hospitality and the Politics of Mobility’ on November 10, 2013.
This article was written as part of International Artist Initiated, a programme of exhibitions an... more This article was written as part of International Artist Initiated, a programme of exhibitions and events devised by the David Dale Gallery to coincide with the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The project acted as a catalyst for discussion and collaboration between artist initiated projects internationally. This paper creates a context for my social practice project called the Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., maps out the history of the British Commonwealth and describes Fresh Milk's contribution to the IAI. Finally it creates a platform for the discursive component of Fresh Milk's participation and suggests that the panel work to unpack the Commonwealth as a macro, historical entity while trying to understand our relationship to it.
This article originally appeared in The Cyprus Dossier, Issue 07, August 2014, p. 80-82.
This paper was presented as part of a symposium at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in Miami in ... more This paper was presented as part of a symposium at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in Miami in celebration of the Caribbean: Crossroads of the World exhibition. The Caribbean Crossroads Symposium: Transnational Histories took place on April 25th and 26th 2014. Transnational Histories consisted of four panels corresponding to the central themes of the exhibition: Fluid Motions, Counterpoints, Shades of History, and Kingdoms of this World. Each panel paired a scholar and artist who presented and discussed their work in relation to the theme. I shared the platform with curator Rocio Arando-Alvarado from El Museo del Barrio and chief curator at the PAMM, Tobias Ostrander who moderated our panel - Counterpoints. Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is at the PAMM from April 18th to August 17th 2014. It explores the diverse history of the Caribbean and its diaspora, highlighting over two centuries of rarely seen works dating from after the Haitian Revolution to the present. The Miami presentation was curated for the PAMM by guest curator, Elvis Fuentes.
Books by Annalee Davis
The Empire Remains Shop, 2018
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) interview visual artist Annalee Davis.... more Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) interview visual artist Annalee Davis. In this essay, Davis speaks about the resurgent diversity of wild plants in former sugarcane fields as a decolonial and botanical act of subversion, defying centuries-old agrarian borders. In this way, abandoned sugarcane fields or rab lands may be seen as emerging botanical archives asserting themselves against a historically imperial landscape and the centuries-long imposition of a single crop, sugarcane. Literally digging into the ground of her family property in Barbados, Davis mines family archives to unpack the plantation, and its multi-layered history. She speaks about how the landscape at multiple levels, culturally, ecologically, economically, and socially. Her performative project, (Bush) Tea Services incorporates found porcelain shards from tea sets and cheap crockery unearthed from around the yard and surrounding fields of the former plantation and makes new teacups, from which she serves bush tea made with plants collected from the fields of the former sugarcane plantation.
Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean, 2016
After more than four and a half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a signifi... more After more than four and a half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significant juncture, pondering what sustainability looks like in a region where the needs of visual artists outstrip the capacity of the environments they live and work in. As a social practice art project with a vision exceeding its financial means, Fresh Milk (FM) seeks a model that acknowledges the local and regional context. It is committed to expanding the critical arena, asserting itself in a way that is not driven by the market or by external forces out of sync with its own agenda. In the quest for sustainability, FM questions how a small, artist-led initiative might continue to respond to the needs of local contemporary visual artists. A new model is required to allow spaces like FM to maintain their intellectual and creative independence and become less vulnerable economically. What is a viable model for a social practice, artist-led project like FM that may contribute to strengthening healthy cultural ecosystems locally and in the Caribbean? This article merely shapes the contours of such a model.
frieze, 2019
Jesse Connuck locates the recipe as the site where hidden systems of colonialism and knowledge in... more Jesse Connuck locates the recipe as the site where hidden systems of colonialism and knowledge intersect in artworks by Congolese Plantation Workers Art League & Renzo Martens, Annalee Davis, and Torolab in this frieze 2019 issue No. 205 titled THE FOOD ISSUE.
Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 2008
The Forager magazine, 2016
This article was commissioned by and originally appeared on The Forager Magazine's online platfor... more This article was commissioned by and originally appeared on The Forager Magazine's online platform in 2016. Based in Bangalore, India, Forager was a journal of food as a cultural practice and political issue. The photo essay speaks to a suite of photographs collectively titled "Sweeping the Fields" and acknowledges the possibility of a post-plantation apothecary.
I met the editor, Deepa Bhasti, while we were both on an artist residency at Delfina Foundation in the Summer of 2016. She invited me to contribute to the e-issue under the theme, Passage. Photo credits with thanks to Helen Cammock. The magazine has since closed.
THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros. , 2015
THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros. The "tropical” has he... more THE TROPICAL: RESISTANCE OR CULTURAL TOURISM? for the Colección Cisneros.
The "tropical” has helped to increase visibility in the global art market for contemporary art produced in Latin America (particularly from the Caribbean, Central America, and Brazil). Its vibrant, colorful, and extravagant iconography can be easily read by a broad audience. On one hand, the tropical can empower a worldview that is different from the “western” mainstream that dominates the global art world. On the other, it can be accused of reproducing an exotic colonial gaze that has historically constructed the tropics as only a place of desire and leisure. Has the tropical become a contemporary aesthetic trend that continues to primitivize the “Other”? How has the Latin American art market boom contributed to promoting a particular form of legibility for practices made in tropical climates? Can the tropical be a useful artistic strategy today or is it condemned to banality?
Provocation by Carla Acevedo-Yates and Cristiana Tejo
https://www.coleccioncisneros.org/editorial/debate/contribution/stretching-tropical
Open Arts Journal, Issue 5: Sustainable art communities | Contemporary creativity and policy in the transnational Caribbean, 2016
After more than four and half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significa... more After more than four and half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significant juncture, pondering what sustainability looks like in a region where the needs of visual artists outstrip the capacity of the environments they live and work in. As a social practice art project with a vision exceeding its financial means, Fresh Milk (FM) seeks a model that acknowledges the local and regional context. It is committed to expanding the critical arena, asserting itself in a way that is not driven by the market or by external forces out of sync with its own agenda. In the quest for sustainability, FM questions how a small, artist-led initiative might continue to respond to the needs of local contemporary visual artists. A new model is required to allow spaces like FM to maintain their intellectual and creative independence and become less vulnerable economically. What is a viable model for a social practice, artist-led project like FM that may contribute to strengthening healthy cultural ecosystems locally and in the Caribbean? This articles merely shapes the contours of such a model.
ARC Magazine, 2012
On May 25th, 2012, Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins of ARC magazine in collaboration with Medulla Ar... more On May 25th, 2012, Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins of ARC magazine in collaboration with Medulla Art Gallery in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, presented a panel of five women who were invited to speak about Trinidad-based, Jamaican metalsmith and sculptural artist, Jasmine Thomas-Girvan’s work. The panel included Melanie Archer, editor of Robert & Christopher Publishers and art director of the trinidad + tobago film festival; Gabrielle Hezekiah, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at UWI, St. Augustine; Sharon Millar, Trinidadian writer; Marsha Pearce, scholar, artist and Ph.D. candidate at UWI, St. Augustine and myself. We were asked to respond to the December 2011 solo exhibition at the Y Gallery – ‘Gardening in the Tropics’ by Jasmine Thomas-Girvan.
What follows is an edited version of the paper I presented in Port-of-Spain and which was published in the online platform, ARC Magazine.
As co-organiser of Caribbean Linked III alongside ARC Magazine and Ateliers ’89, I share my repor... more As co-organiser of Caribbean Linked III alongside ARC Magazine and Ateliers ’89, I share my report which reflects on a long-time dream of mine to realize a regional residency that offers a thriving environment for Caribbean artists to meet, bond and recognize themselves in one another across cultural and linguistic boundaries while allowing for serious contemplation on the issues our islands face. The article was published in August 2015 on ARC Magazine’s website.
As the founding director of The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., I was invited to participate in the... more As the founding director of The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., I was invited to participate in the 18th International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil – 30 Years + Southern Panoramas in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Videobrasil has established itself as one of the most important organizations for video and contemporary art practices in the geopolitical South and included a cross section of curators and critics from arts institutions worldwide, and artists largely from the global South. I presented in the 3rd Focus group of the festival’s public programming, which centered on artist residencies. The following is an edited version of my presentation ‘Unrecognised Affinities’ delivered at the panel titled ‘Hospitality and the Politics of Mobility’ on November 10, 2013.
This article was written as part of International Artist Initiated, a programme of exhibitions an... more This article was written as part of International Artist Initiated, a programme of exhibitions and events devised by the David Dale Gallery to coincide with the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. The project acted as a catalyst for discussion and collaboration between artist initiated projects internationally. This paper creates a context for my social practice project called the Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., maps out the history of the British Commonwealth and describes Fresh Milk's contribution to the IAI. Finally it creates a platform for the discursive component of Fresh Milk's participation and suggests that the panel work to unpack the Commonwealth as a macro, historical entity while trying to understand our relationship to it.
This article originally appeared in The Cyprus Dossier, Issue 07, August 2014, p. 80-82.
This paper was presented as part of a symposium at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in Miami in ... more This paper was presented as part of a symposium at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) in Miami in celebration of the Caribbean: Crossroads of the World exhibition. The Caribbean Crossroads Symposium: Transnational Histories took place on April 25th and 26th 2014. Transnational Histories consisted of four panels corresponding to the central themes of the exhibition: Fluid Motions, Counterpoints, Shades of History, and Kingdoms of this World. Each panel paired a scholar and artist who presented and discussed their work in relation to the theme. I shared the platform with curator Rocio Arando-Alvarado from El Museo del Barrio and chief curator at the PAMM, Tobias Ostrander who moderated our panel - Counterpoints. Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is at the PAMM from April 18th to August 17th 2014. It explores the diverse history of the Caribbean and its diaspora, highlighting over two centuries of rarely seen works dating from after the Haitian Revolution to the present. The Miami presentation was curated for the PAMM by guest curator, Elvis Fuentes.
The Empire Remains Shop, 2018
Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) interview visual artist Annalee Davis.... more Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe) interview visual artist Annalee Davis. In this essay, Davis speaks about the resurgent diversity of wild plants in former sugarcane fields as a decolonial and botanical act of subversion, defying centuries-old agrarian borders. In this way, abandoned sugarcane fields or rab lands may be seen as emerging botanical archives asserting themselves against a historically imperial landscape and the centuries-long imposition of a single crop, sugarcane. Literally digging into the ground of her family property in Barbados, Davis mines family archives to unpack the plantation, and its multi-layered history. She speaks about how the landscape at multiple levels, culturally, ecologically, economically, and socially. Her performative project, (Bush) Tea Services incorporates found porcelain shards from tea sets and cheap crockery unearthed from around the yard and surrounding fields of the former plantation and makes new teacups, from which she serves bush tea made with plants collected from the fields of the former sugarcane plantation.
Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean, 2016
After more than four and a half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a signifi... more After more than four and a half years of programming, The Fresh Milk Art Platform is at a significant juncture, pondering what sustainability looks like in a region where the needs of visual artists outstrip the capacity of the environments they live and work in. As a social practice art project with a vision exceeding its financial means, Fresh Milk (FM) seeks a model that acknowledges the local and regional context. It is committed to expanding the critical arena, asserting itself in a way that is not driven by the market or by external forces out of sync with its own agenda. In the quest for sustainability, FM questions how a small, artist-led initiative might continue to respond to the needs of local contemporary visual artists. A new model is required to allow spaces like FM to maintain their intellectual and creative independence and become less vulnerable economically. What is a viable model for a social practice, artist-led project like FM that may contribute to strengthening healthy cultural ecosystems locally and in the Caribbean? This article merely shapes the contours of such a model.