In 1962, a new Jamaican consciousness and sense of self was reborn in fire through ceremonial state independence from Britain, its former enslaver and colonist. Not since the initiation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association – founded in 1914 by the internationalist political leaders Marcus Garvey and his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey – did the country’s Black majority overwhelmingly acknowledge themselves as the sons and daughters of the African diaspora and active participants in the global Black struggle for liberation, in tandem with the political selfhood they wished to attain. Central to these efforts were self-imaging and esteem-raising cultural work. As Jamaica-born historian Colin A. Palmer states in Inward Yearnings: Jamaica’s Journey to Nationhood (2016): ‘The timing of Jamaica’s birth, for good or ill, was essentially an accident of history […] its fate would depend largely on the people’s capacity to imagine, design and build their own passageways to the future.’
This story is from the Issue 243 - June - August 2024 edition of Frieze.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the Issue 243 - June - August 2024 edition of Frieze.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
I'm trying to follow my instinct: to have confidence and not get into my head too much about what other people are expecting.'
Conversation: Ahead of a solo show at London’s Cubitt Gallery, Marlene Smith speaks to Lubaina Himid about her time in the BLK Art Group, friendship and collaboration
Tell It Slant
Built Environment: Giovanna Silva on photographing history through unexpected architectural interventions
Dean Sameshima
What does it mean to be alone? In Dean Sameshima’s recent body of work – 25 monochrome photographs of queer men in Berlin porn theatres with sumptuous black negative spaces and blinding white cinema screens – ‘alone’ is a complicated term.
Nicole Wermers
Nicole Wermers’s Reclining Female #6 (2024) looks out over Glasgow.
Greater Toronto Art 2024
Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada
Echoes of the Brother Countries
In recent years, the former German Democratic Republic (DDR) has been the subject of a reappraisal that, while not seeking to redeem the stiflingly authoritarian state, has attempted to present a more nuanced overview of its social and cultural realities.
Pierre Huyghe
A pale tetra fish swims around a vast obsidian tank, while another bobs on its side at the top of the water, perhaps ailing from debilitating swim bladder disease (Circadian Dilemma [El Día del Ojo], 2017).
Inward Yearnings
Essay: Rianna Jade Parker retraces the history of the Jamaican intuitives, a group of self-taught artists who ushered in a national form of artmaking mythologizing African traditions through religious divination and esteem-raising cultural work
The Promise of the Past
Built Environment: On the occasion of the ‘Tropical Modernism’ exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Derin Fadina examines the architectural movement’s exclusionary narratives
Where Is Everyone?
Built Environment: Minoru Nomata’s paintings ask why we obsess over unpeopled architecture