Published by CITYAM| By Adam Bloodworth | June 2025

Anguilla is where high-rolling lawyers from New York go to work remotely in tranquillity. It is also becoming an unlikely world-leading beacon for AI due to one lucky coincidence. Adam Bloodworth went in search of answers

The Sunset Bar on St Maarten’s Maho Beach is one of the weirdest tourist attractions in the world. Go at any time and hundreds of cruise ship passengers will be posing with their arms in the air as jumbo jets fly metres above their heads.

The beach is right at the end of the runway, and while sunbathing is permitted, it hardly induces zen to look up at the belly of an A380 that’s close enough to see the nuts and bolts. Tour guides shout to round up their passengers back to the ships, but they cannot be heard over the jet fuel and general hysteria. In the bar, cocktails are called Liquid Viagra and women drink for free if they’re topless. Everyone’s burnt. Taylor Swift is on. Loud. There are more American retirees than there are grains of sand.

A 20 minute boat ride away from this tourist hellscape and I’m somewhere I’m sternly told to keep secret by people on the boat ride over. No one’s joking. “Leave one star reviews,” one New Yorker jokes. That secret? The island of Anguilla.

No cruise ships can get to Anguilla and there’s a ban on fast food and casinos. It is St Maarten’s snobby neighbour and that’s exactly how the expats who move here like it. There are around 15,000 Anguillans on the 16 kilometre-long island, and a small cohort of incredibly high-net-worth Americans who take the one international flight down from Miami. While loads of Caribbean islands extol the benefit of privacy, Anguilla is on another level. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston escaped the paparazzi to come here for crucial break up talks, and Paul McCartney is a regular. “You hear him walking about whistling,” one local tells me. Beaches are immaculate, deserted, and chunky, for those who think bigger is better, and the sand is so fine it’ll give you an endorphin rush just thinking about running your toes through it.

Anguilla: holidays here offer another level of privacy to high-rollers and A-Listers

Lawyers on sabbatical from New York are the sorts who are drawn here – but the island’s radical change in fortunes means its demographic is set to change. Anguilla’s domain name is dot ‘AI’, a coincidence from years ago that has come up trumps for the island in light of the rise of AI. Put simply, businesses wanting a ‘.ai’ website address need to pay Anguilla for the privilege, registering their website on the island. A spike in companies purchasing new websites netted £32m in 2024 for domain name sales. “We want people to understand that AI belongs to Anguilla,” says Lanston Connor, registrar of companies on the island.

Until recently, Anguilla’s only town, The Valley, only had bumpy stone roads. Driving on them hurt the backs of drivers. Flat concrete ones have now been laid using the AI money distributed by the government, and darkened streets are now walkable at night due to new solar lighting. “The Valley feels more like a town” for the first time, one taxi driver tells me. There are still kilometres of shrubland at the centre of the island reminding that Anguilla’s development is still in its infancy: away from the handful of posh hotels, there’s not much here, and that is how the locals and esteemed guests like it.

Inside the Anguilla AI rise: the Caribbean island being revamped thanks to one lucky AI coincidence

Land at the airport and you’ll be met by walls of builders constructing a huge new terminal; drive out of the carpark and you can see a Kardashian-style villa with blackened glass windows, a new private jet airport set to open this spring, anticipating a huge rise in digital nomad and leisure visitors. In front of the new airport, a billboard displaying a picture of a perfect palm fronded beach reads: “Anguilla: The Home of AI.” Three new hotels and a marina are also in construction. It’s an arresting if perplexing new vision of a tech utopia. Could this really be the new home of AI? And what does that even mean?

During my visit, I meet tourist board reps who say the government wants to “grow, grow, grow” its visitor footprint. Others attend conferences in Asia and the Americas to promote Anguilla’s AI identity, although no one seems to know the specifics. When I ask what they are promoting, they say strategy meetings are ongoing.

There is a paradox in growing paradise: you risk ruining the DNA of the place. Isn’t Anguilla’s whole thing that it is totally empty? “The high rollers will leave,” says one Manhattan solicitor when I ask about the influx. Enjoying the remoteness as a contrast to the city, he joins court proceedings digitally from the beach during the weeks he spends working from his condo. He says on a typical day he speaks to no one, and that’s how he likes it.

On a mission to meet Anguillans, I end up on a hike with Boston, who leads walks through the arid heart of the island, showing visitors some of the 100 indigenous plants, including one that foams into a natural soap, and Candlewood that burns when wet. An essential when he was growing up in the 1960s and 70s when electricity was scarce, his hunter-gatherer approach was the only way. As a child, he’d collect Candlewood for his parents, “especially in the morning when they were baking, they needed to have that fire going if it was raining.”

He says the younger generation is reengaging with the island’s biodiversity, which seems partly down to suspicion of modern medicine and partly because of food cost hikes. Despite the little fishing boats pointed out by tourist board representatives, the island imports most of its food and with Trump, tariffs are going up. “A lot of young people are into the natural way, how we used to be a long time ago,” says Boston. How come? “They see the results of it,” he says. “We pass it on, we learn from our parents, those who were here before us.”

Sleep is a big thing in Anguilla – overworked lawyers down from NYC presumably hope a little of that low-stress way of life will rub off on them.

Later I meet Sam, the barman at the Tranquility Beach Anguilla hotel on the island’s West End, who makes a killer rum punch. He uses fresh ginger and mint from his own herb garden, fresh lime juice and a little bit of cane sugar. Tranquility Beach lives up to its name, featuring a series of privately owned condos that are rented out to guests, each with a private hot tub, most with sea views. The beach never has more than three or four groups on it, so they don’t have to wait long on their sunloungers for their rum punch. Like Boston, Sam is of an advancing age, and defaults to nostalgic reflections of Anguilla pre-tourism in the 70s and 80s, when much of the island was off-grid. No locals care about the beach: he tells me the only times he swam as a child was when it rained, when he’d play in the sea.

What do they think of AI? Boston says he doesn’t know too much about it. “I heard about it but I’m not too much into it. The year before last I listened to a programme with this guy who developed it. I listened a bit, but I still ain’t into it.”

Other locals share a similar sentiment, but Lanston Connor is trying to change that. He’s registrar of commercial activities at the Anguilla Commercial Registry, which provides financial services to national and international businesses, so he’s tasked with enticing entrepreneurs to Anguilla to buy AI domain names and – ideally – to register their companies here to exploit the tax free business privileges. “Locals are not as aware of the prevalence of the domain name as they should be,” says Connor. “And the fact that they themselves can become speculators, buy the domain and have it for reselling.”

We’re speaking from a fintech conference being held in an air-conditioned tent on the grounds of the Aurora Hotel, which has a family waterpark in its backyard, featuring loads of multi-coloured slides. At the event, local government officials are miced up so they can be heard over the hum of the AC unit. On the agenda, the usual threat of money laundering, but also AI.

We’re very disconnected to most of the Caribbean. We’re drifters and people of the sea, fishermen, hard working people

“Anguilla is an international financial centre,” says Connor. “We have no corporate taxes, we are a well regulated British overseas territory with that same credible regulation. We’re established in the financial services industry. People can [register] their company anywhere in the world, so we’re just one of many choices, but with the package we’re hoping to put together, including inviting you to visit the island, we’re hoping we can attract high net worth individuals and really high quality companies, including AI start ups. We’re trying to become the home of AI.”

Buy the domain from Anguilla – as Connor says, “it’s ours, it’s unique” – and once you’re registered, the country is preparing a whole lifestyle for you. “We’re hoping they’re already satisfied with their domain and may look to see what other AI services you can have. We have a lovely location with beautiful beaches, beautiful hotels, very nice people, and a very low crime rate. Anguilla is a paradise so we’re just trying to make it a complete paradise, one that includes all the financial services necessary for high net worth individuals to come and live and flourish and feel good. The hope is AI continues to grow, becomes a sustainable revenue generator for the government and we can piggy back on other services, other attractions.”

There is a worry that the money being made – $30 million in 2023, with $100 million projected for 2024 – isn’t reaching people like Boston and Sam. I meet one teacher who asks to remain anonymous. They tell me they’ve seen social issues getting worse due to a lack of funding in education. “There’s a lot of social decline, a decline in values, morals,” they say. “We need more counsellors at the school, we have a lot of social issues – we need programmes for that.” The government says they have been funding local schools, including new campuses, but “what they say and what they do are not necessarily the same. We don’t hear much about where it goes. I’ve seen a lot of children struggling with mental health issues.”

Sleep is a huge part of life in Anguilla – its an attractive prospect for stressed NYC lawyers

Sleep is a big thing in Anguilla – overworked lawyers down from NYC presumably hope a little of that low-stress way of life will rub off on them. Many locals work until 5pm, go to bed, then wake up at 9pm to shower before going back to sleep. That’s not just for oldies; Gen Z schoolkids admit this is the way things go here.

Pride is also big. One hope is that the AI money means Anguilla can stop taking handouts from the British government. The island is still an overseas British territory, despite how increasingly uncomfortable that feels (one of the island’s former plantations is currently being renovated into a museum; locals say it is a “good question” when I ask whether it will educate about how Britons enslaved Anguillans). “We have to pay our way,” Boston tells me, “not just wait on handouts.”

We’d finished our walk, passing an inland lagoon and ending on a gorgeous, empty beach. There are so many, you’ll easily find a whole one for yourself, but even at the hotels in peak season, sunloungers are only a third full. Metres in front of me there’s a decapitated shark’s head; Boston tells me it’s been mauled by a bird.

Bankie Banx, a local reggae singer known as the ‘Anguillan Bob Dylan’, and has laid down tracks with the folk icon, echoes Boston’s sentiment. “We’re very disconnected to most of the Caribbean, we had to survive via our wits and our minds,” he says. “Most of the people are drifters and people of the sea, fishermen, hard working people. They plant crops to keep themselves alive. People built 100 foot boats and pulled them down manually, just like the Egyptians. We’ve been that way for years.”

National pride has led to disappointment at the way the government has handled things. The Anguillan government leased the management of the AI domain to US company Identity Digital, who are operating on a revenue share. The firm is reportedly taking 10 per cent of profits from every domain name sale, with the rest going to the Anguillan government. Patrique, the head chef at the Serenity Beach hotel on the north-east coast (most of the hotels are in the more touristic West End) hoped Anguilla would keep autonomy over the management of their AI domain. “It’s disappointing,” he says from an open kitchen looking out to snorkellers and people lazing over long, late lunches of conch salad and lobster. “We have all that money but I don’t really see where it’s going. I would like it to go into the community, the schools, the future generation.”

An election in February heralded a new era. The Anguilla United Front, promising to reduce tax hikes instated in 2020, were voted in, pushing out the Anguilla Progressive Movement. Their mission, they say, is to put people first. How much of the AI money will be seen by the average Anguillan remains to be seen, but what is a near certainty is that an impending increase in flights will raise the international profile of these beguiling little stretches of sand. Visit right now – don’t leave it too long – and you’re fairly certain to be the only Brit for miles.

Adam Bloodworth is a CITYAM features journalist focusing on culture and lifestyle. He often writes about film, music, TV, theatre, and the way we live our lives in the capital.

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ACUBIEN Newsdesk

Published by New York Ties | By Zachary Small | 23 August 2024

“Green X Gold” Kingston Biennial coming to the National Gallery of Jamaica

The National Gallery of Jamaica has announced that the curator Ashley James will organize this year’s Kingston Biennial, a showcase of Caribbean and African diaspora artists that aims to link the regional art scene with international audiences.

“I have always seen myself as Jamaican American,” said James, 36, whose parents emigrated to New York from the country in the 1970s. “But it has never been in the context of my work — until now.”

The exhibition will be named “Green X Gold”—inspired by the colors of the Jamaican flag—and include more than two dozen artists who examine environmental concerns and how the tourism industry promotes an idealized version of the Caribbean to the outside world. Some artists featured in the show, which is scheduled to open on Dec. 15, will be Oneika Russell, Joiri Minaya, and Rodell Warner.

James became the first Black full-time curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan five years ago. Last year, she opened an exhibition called “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility,” which filled the museum rotunda with artworks by people of color that examined the relationship between technology, surveillance, and race.

An opportunity to plan the Kingston Biennial came as she was putting the finishing touches on the Guggenheim exhibition.

“We were looking for someone to marry intellectual rigor with a presentation that would be accessible,” said O’Neil Lawrence, chief curator at the National Gallery of Jamaica, which says it is the largest and oldest public art museum in the English-speaking Caribbean.

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Jamaica-global style Celebration of Caribbean Diaspora artists

The Kingston Biennial started in 1977 as a celebration of local artists. The program has expanded over the past decade to welcome a more international crowd as some alumni from the exhibition — including Ebony G. Patterson, Renee Cox, and Leasho Johnson — have succeeded in the broader art world. This is only the second time a curator from outside the National Gallery of Jamaica will organize the show, which Lawrence said was part of an effort to bring the biennial into a global context.

James will have a budget of about $160,000 to organize the exhibition, which the Jamaican government supports. The biennial was originally supposed to open in the summer but was delayed because of a packed schedule for the gallery’s 50th anniversary and a lengthy government approval process over the show’s budget.

“I see myself as engaging in a conversation and building out from that,” James said about the biennial. “This is a region of the world that is ripe for the art world to take seriously.”

Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics, and technology. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 24, 2024, Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Guggenheim Curator Will Stage Exhibition of Caribbean Diaspora. See more on: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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ACUBIEN Newsdesk

Published by Glasstiere | By Kaila T. Schedeen | August 2024

Rodell Warner (b. 1986) is an Austin-based, Trinidadian-born artist working across photography and new media. He was the 2023 recipient of the Tito’s Prize, an annual award that provides an unrestricted $15,000 to a local artist and a solo exhibition in Big Medium’s gallery. We sat down over tea and talked about his practice, archives, relationship to community and place, and what’s on the horizon.

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KS: It sounds like it’s a partnership in the sense that it’s romantic, but also intellectual, and you guys have that back and forth.

RW: Absolutely. I didn’t know I needed a person who understood and could think with me about what I’m doing, and I can think about what they’re doing, but it’s one of the most important things. 

KS: When I look at your work (and this is partly because I come from a photographic focus in art history), I am thinking about photography and its development throughout the nineteenth century. Could you tell me about how you came to the medium of photography? And how you’re thinking about it in your work, both in practice and conceptually?

RW: I came to photography by accident. One of my first visual works that I made was when I was a teenager [was because] I couldn’t find any clothes that I liked, so I’d make my own. I would grab images from the internet and collage them together, print them, then cut stencils and apply them onto t-shirts. I would also buy a lot of stock photos. At one point I was like, if I had a camera, I could spend less on stock photos. I did some research and bought whatever the entry level Canon digital camera was at that time. And I absolutely fell in love with photography. I didn’t care about photos except for what I could get from them, but I fell in love with the camera. 

Then the first job that I got in advertising, they needed somebody to take pictures for this little strip ad that we had on the front page of the newspaper. It was called Moments of Peace — they just needed somebody to go out into the world and grab beautiful, peaceful images. So in contrast to all the shitty headlines and everything, there’s this thing on the bottom of the page where people’s eyes can land. That’s how I got into photography. 

My education after high school was self-directed. I got into art school, but I couldn’t pay for it. I was willing to do part time, but the school didn’t accommodate a part-time schedule, so I had to choose. I already had a job working in arts, so I was like, I’m going to do that. I’m around all of these older artists all of the sudden — they’re really experienced, and they’re older Trinidadians. They were watching globalization transform the place and they reminisce about how it used to be and what they like about it. They talked about how we can preserve things. They talk about what’s good, what we should keep and not lose, and what we should amplify. And they talked about the past.

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I’m now online looking for visual evidence of all these things that they’re talking about. In the 70s and 80s, there were cottage industries, trade protections that meant that local fashion designers had really successful fashion houses. So I’m like, can I see what that looked like? I’m looking online for it, and that sent me down a rabbit hole of historical images of Trinidad. I already loved photography — this just gave a new context. It’s not just me in love with the camera anymore, learning about lighting and things like that. It’s also enjoying and appreciating the documentary nature of photography while trying to locate myself in this place. 

I started doing this archival image process in 2014. At that time, I was really just collecting images. In 2020, looking at all these pictures from different islands, I started noticing that in a lot of these pictures, Black people are photographed from this oppressive gaze. It’s not about them, it’s about what they’re doing. How they’re made to work. They’re just machinery in so many of these pictures. I’m pretty sure my conversations with Nicole at that point had a lot to do with me realizing this. Before I had  articulated this, I would be looking for images that had a certain feeling. I was looking for pictures of Caribbean people that escaped that oppressive context, of which there aren’t many. I’m always digging through archives looking for this.

KS: When you say archives, are you physically going to archives and sifting, or are you looking through what’s online?

RW: I’m finding what’s online. So much of what I do is digital. Over the last three or four years, since I have begun articulating that I’m interested in working with archives, opportunities have come up to go to an actual archive and look through physical images. But optimally what I want is online.

KS: Could you talk more about what an archive is to you? How do you approach them and how do you think about them in your work? Specifically with the two series in this exhibition — Augmented Archive (2019-ongoing) and Artificial Archive (2023-ongoing) — how does the archive influence them?

RW: My original intention was to find images that help me contextualize myself in the location that I was a part of, that I grew up in. Originally, the archive represented just information, memory. It felt precious in an uncomplicated way for that reason. I had conversations with Nicole, who at the time that I started this project was reading Saidiya Hartman and talking about information that is left out of archives. She was reading An Eye for the Tropics…

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KS: By Krista Thompson?

RW: Right. Krista Thompson is also talking about what’s left out. As Nicole read my work and talked to me about it, she was pointing this out to me. It complicated my understanding of the archive, and I started thinking: of course, who took these pictures? What couldn’t they have seen? What does it mean that these people in the pictures weren’t the ones directing what was photographed? Thinking more about what’s left out, and what’s biased about what was captured, made me think of archives in a more complex way. This led to imagining: well, if they did have cameras, what might we have seen? What might their lives have looked like? 

When I first shared the Augmented Archive works and would talk about them, I would talk about the need to imagine more about these people’s lives. It would feel like I’m handing the audience a real limitation in the face of an actual document, actual photography. You have to use your imagination to get a fuller picture, and maybe a truer picture, of what these people’s lives were like. It sounds kind of ridiculous at first. But the more you think about it and do it, the more you realize it’s absolutely necessary, and it’s unfair for you to do otherwise. In a way, if you don’t do that, you’re accepting the limitations of that colonial gaze and you’re empowering the authority that created the images in the way they did.

For a few years, imagination was a thing that I was talking about. But when these AI text and image generating tools came up, I could then visualize what I was imagining. I started off by trying to visualize for Artificial Archive what the pictures might have looked like if the people had cameras. What does their home life look like? A lot of that doesn’t naturally exist in the actual archive. It’s important to realize that you can’t replace what wasn’t captured. But if we’re already imagining and trying to fill out our ideas of these people with fiction, then it’s also wise to be a little bit expansive. Because if you limit what you’re imagining based on what was documented, you’re still controlled by that limited gaze. 

I went to Jamaica in 2018 to be with Nicole, and somebody invited me to do a photography workshop at a high school. I get there and I teach the children about focal points, lighting, things like that, and I have them take pictures of each other. We get back to the classroom and project the pictures and talk about them. The first pictures that come up on the screen are of a light-skinned child in the class, and we have a normal conversation about the technical bits of photography. Then we move onto somebody else’s pictures; a picture of a dark-skinned child, one of the other students, comes up on the screen. There in the darkness of the room somebody shouts out “SLAVERY!” and all of them start laughing. It’s a very tight-knit group of children, they have their own humor, and I’m trying not to make too much of it. But I realized that the image of this dark-skinned child is equated, at least in one mind, to being enslaved. That is a direct result of images like those here. That’s the context in which you see dark-skinned people of the past. There is this deleterious effect that the photographic archive of the Caribbean has on the imagination of Caribbean people, and how we think of ourselves, and therefore what we’re capable of. So instead of telling the audience “Use your imagination,” I can show them how I’m using mine with AI-generated pictures.

KS: From my understanding, AI is fed with existing information — images, texts — and assuming that all this existing information is emerging from colonial structures that produced the type of imagery you’re talking about, how do you think about AI as a tool when its own framework and its source material is some of the same stuff you’re pushing back against in your work?

RW: Because that’s not all that’s in there. The model that I use is called Stable Diffusion — it’s been fed by the Laion Data Set, which I think is something like 12 million image-text pairs. That’s twelve million images that have been tagged, which is going to include all of these really biased older images, but it’s also going to include all kinds of modern images of Black people shot by themselves in other contexts. This allows for me to, in my wording of the prompt, take what I want from the old stuff and add imagery from other contexts. I can ask for imaginary things. So yes, there are limitations, but they can be easily sidestepped. 

KS: That’s a great argument for the importance of Black representation continuing into the modern age, to be able to counter pre-existing images that are more harmful. The creation and documentation of modern imagery created by and for people of color is extremely important because that feeds into not only how we think about the past and the present, but how we can imagine different futures, too. That’s interesting in your work as well, because you’re thinking about the past in the present moment, but the works are also very futuristic in a lot of ways. How do you think about the future in your work? Are you thinking about what comes after?

RW: Most importantly, I’m thinking of those children who are going to encounter my work, and how I actually have the power to influence how they see themselves from these images. I’ve already had experience with this. One of the people who was in that high school class I mentioned is here at UT Austin doing a master’s right now. When she came to the show, and I told these stories, she said it really makes her want to be a Caribbean photographer. She already is, but the way she thought about what that means, the importance of that…the hair on my arms is standing up right now, because that’s what it can do. When I think about the future, and how this work can influence it, I’m thinking about those people and the fact that they’re looking at this work and riffing off of it. 

KS: Something that I think about a lot is the ways that the art world segments artists into groups based off of labels that are either racial, gender-based, geographic, etc. In this sense, you have been labeled and have self-labeled as Trinidadian and as Caribbean. I’m curious how you feel that type of labeling affects the ways that people react to your work, or read it?

RW: I started off actively avoiding any kind of label. I used to draw and stencil and thought of myself as kind of a graffiti person, or someone who was into illustration. Those are the makers I found kinship in. When people started labeling me a photographer, they also started feeling that they had license to tell me what I should photograph, how the history of photography should dictate what I do — which was really them saying what they would like me to do. I actively went in another direction. Making things online, people are less interested in labels at that point, and less able to label you, because everybody is kind of anonymous. It’s really about the form of the thing. And that was a way to get rid of labels.

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But what I realized eventually is that my focus on evading labels also made me illegible in ways that I did not appreciate. Even if I was trying to talk about something without overtly saying that’s what I’m making work about, I realized it is possible that this could get lost on somebody. Or it is possible that when people are talking about work that addresses the Caribbean, they don’t include mine because it hasn’t been articulated. When I started making work and exhibiting, there was so much focus on letting the work speak for itself. My first versions of my website would present images with no text. That was all about evading labels. But I realized that it’s more important to equip the audience to find ways to enter the work, to create conversation. 

KS: How do you feel about the potential label of “Texas artist,” or even “American artist” more broadly?

RW: I worry about what it’s going to look like to my friends at home! [Laughing]

KS: There are definitely assumptions that come with that, but there are also assumptions that come with the label “Caribbean artist.”

RW: I think I’m more willing to be subjected to what those are, and break them, or fall into them, than to get caught up with the expectations of a Texas artist, or American artist, when I don’t even know what those are really. I’m actively always trying to assess what I’m loyal to, where I came from; I’m always suspicious of a national label on what I do. But it does matter to children in the place that I’m from. Next year I’m going to have my first solo show in a museum, and if they see an article about that, and they know that this person is from where they’re from, that makes a difference. That means something. For that reason, I do want that information to be transferred with my work.

KS: I want to ask you about color, because it is really striking to me how colorful some of these images are. From a photo history perspective, color didn’t become widely used until the twentieth century. What was your thought process in including color in these reimaginations of historic archival images?

RW: Around 2014 I started including these 3D-animated objects that I would generate and use in archival photos. I then started colorizing black and white photos in 2020 because an AI colorization tool became available online. When I started doing that, I really wanted the animated object to fit into the limited palate of the colorized images, so I would sample colors from the colorized image. When I show these works to people, they talk so much about color and how the vibrancy is impacting them. People talk about these animated objects representing to them the souls of the people, or sometimes they talk about chakras, halos, or other kinds of visualizations of the spiritual self. For them, and for the advancement of that part of the conversation, I have been trying more to include color. But people have such a huge reaction to the color in these that when I don’t use it, I actually feel like I’m taking something away from the audience. Even though sometimes to me it feels more fitting to use the monochrome ones.  

KS: There often comes an assumption with monochromatic photography that it is somewhat nostalgic, or it belongs to the past rather than to the present. I think people have an easier time relating to photographs in color, or approximating life from them, rather than black and white photographs, which are less lifelike in that sense.

RW: Absolutely. You can imagine more about these people if you see them in color — it’s easier to imagine that they’re like us, or that they have lives like us, because they don’t automatically get relegated to the past. That’s the other thing I realized: when I think about the Caribbean in the 1800s, I automatically think of these types of pictures, not paintings or drawings. It’s obvious to me the power of photography in unconsciously determining the limits of my imagination. And I want my photographs to be added to the range of what you can imagine.    

KS: What’s next for you and your practice after this exhibition? 

RW: I just got into the Film/Video MFA Program at Bard College.

KS: Congratulations!

RW: Thank you. It’s a low-residency MFA, so I need to be there for eight weeks in the summer this year, next year, and the year after that. The rest will be remote. This was a pipe dream — I didn’t know how I was ever going to get into a master’s program. But Nicole found it. I asked, “how did you find out about this?” She said “I looked!”

KS: The benefits of being married to a researcher! [Laughing]

RW: Right? I am also in conversations with two museums next year about exhibitions. Both are instances where I am going to be well-resourced to create new works. And the photographer Will Wilson just taught me how to make tintypes, so I’m excited to do more of that now that I have all the information. I’m going to spend more time making actual tintypes.

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Personal Stories of Indo-Caribbean Culture

There just aren’t enough stories publicly shared and documented about Indo-Caribbean culture. The Museum of London Docklands is trying to change that by bringing the lesser-known history of Indian indenture in the British Caribbean to the public. A free display, exploring Indo + Caribbean: The creation of a culture, runs until 19 November, 2023.

Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, British planters in the Caribbean devised a new scheme to source cheap labour for their plantations, recruiting workers from India to work for three to five years in return for transport, a minimal wage and some basic provisions.

Having successfully petitioned the British government for their support, the first indentured ships- Hesperus and Whitby- set sail in 1838. By the end of indentureship in 1917 around 450,000 Indians had undertaken the long and arduous 5 months journey by sea to the Caribbean.

Working together with Londoners of Indo-Caribbean descent, Indo-Caribbean: Untold stories in the creation of a culture tells the underrepresented history of Indian indenture and explores Indo-Caribbean culture in London today.

The displays explore the transition between enslaved African labour and the start of Indian indenture, including letters petitioning the government from planter Sir John Gladstone. Visitors will examine the poor conditions on board and the strong bonds forged between migrants as they crossed the Kala Pani or ‘dark waters.’ Life in the Caribbean for indentured labourers was arduous from the moment of their arrival. The exhibition also explores Indo-Caribbean Londoners today, exploring migration to the United Kingdom and drawing on personal stories of London’s Indo-Caribbean community.

Indo + Caribbean: The creation of a culture is the result of a call for ideas to feature in the museum’s permanent London, Sugar and Slavery gallery. It is part of the Museum of London Docklands’ 20^th anniversary programme.

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Updated December 2022

Kehinde Wiley: “The World Stage: Jamaica” Exhibition, London

Kehinde Wiley’s “The World Stage: Jamaica is the seventh platform within a series of projects that explore portrait painting in the context of the broader evolution of global pop culture. I chose models through a street casting process in the neighborhood of Trench Town in Kingston, Jamaica, as well as the dance halls and clubs throughout the city. The works investigate the rhetorical strengths of 18th- and 19th-century British portraiture and draw a distinct line of cultural and economic lineage between the United Kingdom and Jamaica. ‘The World Stage: Jamaica’ seeks to provoke the viewer to reassess the visual vocabulary of the portrait and the depiction of black and brown people globally.” (Kehinde Wiley, Modern Painters, September 2013)

Jamaican Symbolism in 17th, 18th Century British Portraiture

Stephen Friedman Gallery hosted The World Stage: Jamaica, Kehinde Wiley’s first-ever UK solo exhibition in London in 2013. Wiley has already achieved international acclaim for his highly naturalistic paintings of contemporary urban men adopting heroic poses directly referencing classical portraiture. Kehinde Wiley’s celebrated “The World Stage” body of work, previously focused on Brazil, China, Israel, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sri Lanka, is exhibited across museums and galleries in Europe and the USA.

The World Stage: Jamaica exhibition featured Jamaican men and women postering in 17th and 18th Century British portraiture. It was the first time in the World Stage series that portraits of women were featured. The juxtaposition between the sitter and the art historical references reflects the relationship between Jamaica and former colonial power. Wiley’s restaging of this history transformed the race and gender of the traditional art-historical hero to reflect the contemporary urban environment. The subjects’ proud posturing refers to both the source painting and the symbolism of Jamaican culture, with its singular people and specific ideals of youth, beauty, and style.

Wiley embellishes his paintings with intricate, ornate backgrounds that contradict the somber posturing of the subjects and allude to the bold styles of urban fashion. In this new body of work, lavish patterning informed by the iconic British textile designer William Morris surround, overlay, and entwine the figures. Pieces of these symbolic patterns both harmoniously fuse and create dramatic opposition between the two contrasting elements that form the work. In the previous series, this decoration has been inspired by a fusion of period styles, ranging from Islamic architecture to Dutch wax printed textile and French Rococo design.

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Friedman Gallery Exhibition Preview Film

For this project, Wiley renders his subjects in exquisite detail, capturing a pose, a history, and a culture. Jamaica is filtered through aspects of British history to create something wholly unique; disparate iconography, such as a contemporary tattoo and a William Morris wallpaper design, merge together to form equal parts of the narrative. The artist continues to redefine portraiture, cementing his status as one of the leading painters working today.

The gallery also presents a film depicting Wiley’s process as the project unfolds. The camera follows the artist on his research trips to London, visiting the National Portrait Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Brixton Market, and then onto Jamaica. There it follows him to underground dance halls, Negril beach, and downtown Kingston as he searches for the models for his paintings.

The World Stage: Jamaica was exhibited at Stephen Friedman Gallery in 2013

Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977 in Los Angeles, USA) lives and works in New York, USA, and Beijing, China. He will be the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA in 2015.  Wiley’s work features in the permanent collections of numerous prominent institutions including The Jewish Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Studio Museum, Harlem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Words reprinted courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Our kind thanks to Stephen Friedman Gallery and CCH Pounder on her visit to London for bringing this exhibition to the attention of ACU|BIEN.

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Updated November 2022

Meiling exclusive interview with Gus Franklyn-Bute

Berlin, Germany is an exciting world city that everyone should visit at least once. I am lucky to have fulfilled that dream and am eager to return to witness firsthand how the city continues to evolve. One of those visits was almost a decade ago to attend the Caribbean Essence Fashion Showcase organised by Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA). The location was the Opernwerkstätten (now permanently closed), an abandoned opera prop factory in the Berlin-Mitte district. The raw industrial setting conjured a striking ambiance as a backdrop for five Caribbean designers who took the spotlight among an array of international fashion creatives.

MEILING was one of the five women designers showing at the Caribbean Essence Fashion Showcase. Preeminent throughout the region for luxury fashion wear, the Meiling label is an undeniable definition of authentic Caribbean luxury. Meticulous in detail, and dexterous in the use of textures and organic fabrics, Meiling’s designs articulate high-taste, high-table simplicity. While in Berlin, I sat down with Meiling for an exclusive interview.

Q: The MEILING brand has the acclaim of being a Caribbean icon with a global footprint, but why Berlin? – and what are your expectations for showing at The Gallery Berlin as part of the Caribbean Essence Fashion Showcase?

A| Berlin is an exciting city filled with energetic young people. I love the city layout with its open spaces, artistic sensibility, and of course fashion-forward atmosphere. You can feel in the air that it is a city with great promise to be ‘the world city’.  Berlin was chosen by the Caribbean Export Development Agency (CEDA) which sponsored the presentation of the five Caribbean designers since it is now the home to 12 major fashion trade shows that signal the beginning of the Spring/Summer Fashion Season.

I had no expectations going into the show. Breaking into the global fashion market is tough and in Germany, it is even tougher we knew it was going to be a hard nut to crack. The project managers in Germany prepared us for the conservative approach of the German fashion buyer.  In addition, we are the new kids on the block and buyers need to see that we return for at least four seasons if they are going to take us seriously. Finally, it is always a hurdle to break down the stereotype that the Caribbean is only sea, sand, and surf.

Q: Caribbean creativity and designs are arguably as good as any in the world. Yet, collectively they have made only a limited footprint on the global scene. What’s wrong, and why is it taking so long to reach as equitable a position as designs from other territories?

A| Thank you Gus for the compliment on Caribbean creativity which I believe is world-class. In fact, the global community is looking to us for inspiration in music, art, and fashion. However, they have the means and resources to develop and commercialize it.

It has taken so long in the Caribbean to make any dent in the global fashion industry for several reasons. Collectively the English-speaking Caribbean (excluding Haiti and the Dominican Republic) is only six million people. However, we are fragmented into several islands competing with each other, instead of working together. We need to act as one cohesive strong voice in areas such as manufacturing, brand development, distribution, etc. (all the non-glamourous backend stuff).

Another major impediment is that the Global Fashion World has two main seasons, Spring/Summer and Autumn/ Winter. There is also Resort and unfortunately, that is where the Caribbean designers tend to be pigeonholed. I always tell people, I am a designer who happens to live in the Caribbean and I’ve realized that international buyers want to see that I can design and produce for all seasons. It is just the way it is and we have to get over it and not limit ourselves.

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Q: The Cocoon capsule collection with its versatility, sculptured designs, and edgy playfulness seems to appeal to a specific type of woman who can confidently wear this collection. Would you agree that this collection is not for a wider audience, but for a specific type of woman who can wear this ‘contemporary lady in black’ collection?

A| Gus, you need to look at the Lookbook again, LOL, since the collection is just the opposite. It is a very easy-to-wear collection and the beauty of it is that it serves as a backdrop for accessorizing and combining with other treasured pieces from a woman’s wardrobe. It is also a versatile, easy-to-care travel wardrobe in cotton knit.  I would also go further to say that the knit pieces are a three-season wardrobe that can be worn with other layers such as a turtle neck sweater below and tights and leggings.

What amazed me with the response to this collection is the variety of women who love it and are clamoring for it! They range from 18 to 60 and in all shapes and sizes!

Q: Meiling, how do you respond to the continued awards and accolades? For example, does your elevation to the national icon for Trinidad and Tobago add pressure to continue to be creative, or have you settled into a status quo?

A| I believe I am only as good as my last collection and this is something I try to impart to young interns and even other established designers. Fashion is extremely competitive and one has to stay relevant, educated on the trends, up on the forecasting for the next season, and always pushing the envelope. I am always learning, growing, and being humbled by the creativity of local, regional and international fashion.

Q: What next for the MEILING brand?

A| The MEILING brand is working very hard to ‘make that dent’ on the global platform.  I am blessed to have a devoted core team in my CEO, Sharleen Chin, and my COO, Marsha Syder. We are working with global industry experts to follow best practices and to get our ‘foot in the door’. Our goal is that in the next five years, the brand will be featured in every major fashion magazine and we will be the ‘overnight success that has worked for over 40 years.

Caribbean Essence – A Fashion Showcase at The Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 2013

Caribbean Export Development Agency (Caribbean Exports) is a regional export development and trade and investment promotion organisation with a mission to increase the competitiveness of the Caribbean countries by providing export development and investment promotion services through effective program execution and strategic partnerships.

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Updated October 2022

Caribbean Diaspora on the move

The Caribbean Diaspora is truly on the move. The impact of the Caribbean people on communities around the world is reshaping and redefining how other people and other communities live and how the world sees the Caribbean and its diverse people. Each migrating national is an ambassador for their country and the wider Caribbean. Collectively, the places we depart from, the destinations where we land, and the neighbourhoods we make our second homes resemble a global route map of which any major airline would be proud.

The Caribbean diaspora and Caribbean people are circumnavigating the globe with increasing frequency and adventure than at any other time in history. Caribbean people are venturing into new territories in search of new opportunities to study, work, live, and build families beyond the traditional metropolitan cities like London, New York, and Toronto. The Caribbean diaspora is melting into and sprouting up in newer host countries like Taiwan, Japan, China, and Germany.

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“Foward Home” should be the cultural cry of the Caribbean Diaspora

For this newer generation of the Caribbean diaspora, which includes second and third generations of earlier migrants from the region, burning questions remain: what impact are they measurably making in business, culture, academia, and politics? What influence or “power” do they hold as a Caribbean diaspora that enriches the lives and livelihoods of their host communities and country? What contribution are they making to their Caribbean heritage, the Caribbean region, and the country they and their families identify with?

“Forward Home: The Power of the Caribbean Diaspora” is a short documentary film that beautifully unearths the reality of the economic power of the people of the Caribbean diaspora living in global cities. Shot on location in 9 countries (London, Toronto, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Suriname, New York, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago), the 10-minute film reveals the significance of the Caribbean diaspora contribution to their homeland, as travelers and entrepreneurs. Its power continues to resonate today, challenging each generation of the Caribbean diaspora to reflect on their individual and collective contribution to where we now call home and where we and our families consider our original homeland. After all, we are a plural people.

Forward Home (2011) from Imagine Media International Ltd

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Updated May 2022

Marlon Roudette’s exclusive interview with Gus Franklyn-Bute

Marlon Roudette is arguably one of the most original Caribbean-influenced music talents to have emerged internationally over the past few decades. The London-born, British-Vincentian singer-songwriter achieved global success, particularly in mainland Europe. Roudette’s 2011 hit single New Age from debut solo album Matter Fixed reached number one in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. By recent count New Age video, co-written with the hit-maker Guy Chambers has over 21 million views on YouTube. There is no doubting Marlon Roudette‘s enormous talent as an instrumentalist and wordsmith. Yet the question of why some artists do not attain global reach equal to their musical output and talents is never a simple answer.

His strong pedigree inevitably influences Marlon Roudette’s creativity. His father is Cameron McVey, the British music producer who has worked with the likes of Neneh Cherry, Sugarbabes, Massive Attack, and All Saints.  Mom Vonnie Roudette is an artist, educator, designer, and activist-advocate. Mom is Dominican-Trinidadian and moved young Marlon and sister Aiko Roudette to the Caribbean as children, settling in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  When Marlon was seventeen, he moved back to London, teamed up with his friend Preetesh Hirji and formed the band Matta Fixed. By then, his musical and creative exposure had developed on a strong arc, influenced by reggae, soca, soul, hip-hop, rap, and jazz. Marlon Roudette’s motifs of the steel pan and the Vincy flag are ever-present in his live performances, videos, and imagery.

Two years after the release of the first solo album, ACU|BIEN caught up with Marlon in late 2014, as he was hard at work on his second solo album. We are honored to hear from an artist who is adored throughout Europe and many corners of the world and continues on his path to finding his way into the hearts of larger British, Caribbean, and perhaps North American audiences. The saying that “a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country” has rarely had more merit.

_______________________________________________________________________________

For Marlon Roudette fans, the MatterFixers album Matter Fixed is perhaps in the vein of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – a body of work one returns to time after time that re-resonates with new life-love experiences. Matter Fixed has been on my playlist since it dropped in 2011. For us in the Caribbean Diaspora, we older transient Caribbean people who often reminisce about home, the album track Riding Home echos of a simpler pre-smartphone age of seeming innocence, long gone.

What do you think? Does Marlon’s story resonate with you in any way? Share your thoughts!

Listen and download Marlon Roudette’s album Matter Fixed

Originally published December 2013

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Updated April 2022

Beyond your imagination lives the Sweetest Summer Festival. It’s more than just a Caribbean carnival. Crop Over is a three-month-long fiesta, climaxing with a mega-market of food, booze, art, music, and J’ouvert, also known as fore day morning. Bridgetown Market becomes party central.

Crop Over in Barbados: joy, bacchanal, abandonment

Endorsed as the “Sweetest Summer Festival‘ by revelers from around the world and across Barbados, Crop Over epitomises fun, joy, bacchanal, and sheer abandon. Fashioned against the scenery of friendly people, hypnotizing blue waters, and sandy beaches, Barbados Crop Over is the perfect Caribbean destination to recapture your joie de vivre. Barbados itself is a must-visit, all-year-round destination, and is especially popular during the summer months.

Between June and August, Crop Over is a Bajan cultural fest with an extravaganza of over thirty events and activities ascending to the Grand Kadooment, a masquerade packed with food, colour, and revelry. Rooted in Barbados’ rich culture and heritage, Crop Over harkens back to an age when sugar cane was “King: in the Caribbean.  The earliest accounts from 1798 recorded the Harvest Home Festival celebrated the end of the sugar harvest with slaves and planters celebrating in song, dance, and merriment.  Today, Crop Over celebrates the tradition of signaling the end of the sugar cane harvest in a national display of cultural heritage, creativity, and spectacle. These historic celebrations have evolved into the Sweetest Summer Festival.

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Capturing everything ‘Barbadiana’

The Opening Gala and Ceremonial Delivery of the Last Canes, signaling the official start of the festivities is a uniquely Barbadian cultural event, peppered with historical references and mixed with modern-day entertainment. This is a must-see for visitors looking to capture a one-stop-shop experience of everything ‘Barbadiana’. At this event, in the presence of dignitaries and throngs of patrons, national homage is paid to symbols of the Festival’s Heritage – those plantation workers who harvest the most sugar canes for the season, with the ultimate crowning of the “King and Queen of the Crop“.

Nowhere else in the world can you find pan fused with jazz and tuk band rhythms on a hillside picnic; or Pan Under the Stars on the water’s edge of one of the oldest historic colonial cities; or the great Caribbean Pan showdown set against two miles of white sand and crystal blue water. To do this you must experience the Sweetest Summer Festival in Barbados. And, after two years of lockdowns and social distancing, the people of Barbados welcome back visitors to their shores, and Crop Over 2022, which climaxes between 27 July and 2 August 2022, is a perfect time to visit.

Of course, party enthusiasts are offered the ultimate carousing experience with events like Soca Royale and Cohobblopot. Soca Royale packs a powerful double punch featuring the Sweet Soca and Party Monarch Competitions.

Meanwhile, the premier international event, Cohobblopot is the ultimate showcase of the Season’s monarchs, popular artistes both local and international, and soca hits.

Crop Over festival fever seizes the senses: Something for everyone!

But!… to this London boy from the Caribbean, returning home to the Sweetness of Crop Over can only be described as a sensation that the palate and spine must savour in unison.  It is a tingle echoing in the eardrum that sends a sweet vibration down to the spine, which unleashes a festival fever that seizes the senses. It signals the time to remove the tension locking my body in an upright position for months. It is a time of true abandonment allowing the spirit of the festival to take over my soul. And so, finding myself humming a hot soca tune, partying non-stop for 24 hours, making new friends from across the world, and enjoying the magnificent food topped off with the world’s oldest and finest rums is a common outcome during Crop Over.

As the Sweetest Summer Festival, Crop Over offers something for everyone, be it artists celebrating diverse art and crafts in the Visual Arts & Crafts Festival or the ever-popular Poetry Slam event READ-IN! The Festival is more than a carnival. Climaxing with one mega-market of food, art, and music, Barbadian J’ouvert known as Foreday morning, Bridgetown Market becomes party central on the final weekend of Crop Over. And of course, Grand Kadooment is the icing on the cake with thousand upon thousands masquerading in a 4-mile-long sea of colour, topped off with soca music that is as sweet as cane sugar. Grand Kadooment spectacle is a magical event that tops off what is known simply as Crop Over…the Sweetest Summer Festival!

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Find out more about Grand Kadooment? VisitBarbados.org

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Updated February 2022

Trapped in my bubble in a public space a while back, the attempt to balance my meal, drink, book, and iPod ended in a frustrating mess, splayed across the floor. I didn’t cry, but I came close. Honestly! Instead, I did the next best thing. I conjured one of my best “fucks”, dusted it off, and let it rip. The expletive went soaring into the public domain. My social radar sensed a bustle of activity immediately behind me. I turned and an older woman, perhaps with her daughter and grandchild was shadowing me. Condemnation and judgment were etched deeply ear to ear and brow to chin across their faces.

Loose Profanity

The social persecution filled me with regret, but only for a moment. I reasoned that they didn’t deserve the full force of my cursing spasm since one was older and the other was a child. My eagerness to apologise was a reflex of a disappearing West Indian upbringing, and the residual fear of my granny brandishing the leather strap, her teeth clenched with righteous indignation. As I shifted to let the fearful family pass and set about tidying my mess, I began to wonder, “why did I see this cussing as a real issue; and why did I think bad of something that felt so good?”

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Caribbean moral standards dictate that your manners, or lack thereof, reflect your “broughtupsy”, specifically the way you were cultured and raised at home. This questionable dogma and behaviour were made all the more sinful during that period on a Sunday, after church, as those pew gossiping, panty girdle-wearing, elderly ladies clip-clopped home from praise and sanctity. To speak or behave in any manner that even remotely reflected sub-moral standards expected at home, would not go unmentioned or unpunished. The “manners maketh man” mantra, in-famous in Caribbean discipline, would prologue a cut-ass for the transgression.

Judge Not

There is something to be said for well-trained members of society. How often have you had to cope with some belligerent drunk on public transport, or the notorious mobile phone hog who lacks a full grasp of the functionality of the microphone? Social etiquette is imperative to the balance and order of any community, but it is impossible to deny the thrill of throwing out good and audible “fuck” or the swearword of your choice in the direction of the asshole who cuts you off in traffic. There is a social principle that suggests how we should act and where and when we may be allowed to exercise the freedom of a blue outburst. However, why does a the fuck swearword generate such genuine displeasure to the ear? What has traumatised us so completely that we cannot let go of the stigma attached to the word?

As I continued to tidy my lunch from the floor, I reflected on my intellect and my reclamation of the F word.  The family had gone, but I continued to question why I was the one seemingly bent out of shape over what, a word? “Was it really about the word? Surely I wasn’t the first person they heard utter such an expletive? I certainly wouldn’t be the last.”

The F word is here to stay. My mother, bless her heart, still takes time out of her day to scold me, a thirtysomething-year-old, when I swear on my Facebook timeline. The reasoning might be far more complex in my case, but the purpose is the same. My manners are still a portrayal of my parents and what people think of me matters to them – it is the way it should be. While I may roll my eyes from time to time, somewhere deep down it’s cute to know that you are never too old to be chided or coached to do better.

Old fashioned?

Swearing has always been a pseudo-language. It allows us to colour outside the lines and release steam when faced with a precarious situation. For example, a gentle “nofuckingway” is used to emphasise genuine shock or disbelief.

The word “fuck” is believed to have been first used in literature in the late 1400s. The divisions created by its use are a little more than a case of old school vs. new age. In my youth, obscene words were left for streetwalkers and rum shopgoers, social habits that “respectful’ members of society discouraged their children from pursuing. Back in the day, well, back in the early 1990s, you were expected to be dressed appropriately, speak when spoken to, and be respectful of the laws and norms of a respectful society.  These days, when I watch a child go ape shit in public I would become nostalgic about the Caribbean discipline I endured.

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Having established that I know better and understand the norms of respectability and social etiquette, it’s my choice to enjoy throwing F-bombs at times to drive a point home. My mainstay expressions include the stone-walled “fuck off”; the passive-aggressive “fuck him”; not to mention the deprecating “fuck me”; and the obviously confrontational ‘“fuck you”. While I am waving my flag in support of the fucking cause, I equally embrace that many of us refrain from profanity as a means of expression.

What does using F-bombs say about you?

Naturally, how we live is ultimately defined by our actions and not merely our words. A foul mouth is as much an asset in the right circumstance. Using F-bombs doesn’t make you a bad person and not swearing doesn’t make you good. Manners go deeper than social expectations, they hold you to your values, and they balance the internal and the outer parts of your experience. The challenge for me is not to stop using fuck words, but to know their true value when you are compelled to use them.

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