Puerto Rican artists in Contemporary Caribbean Art group show at Pérez Art Museum Miami

Andrea Chung. Filthy Water Cannot Be Washed, 2017. Cyanotypes, gouache and watercolor pencils. 240 x 88 inches. Courtesy the artist

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is pleased to announce The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, a thematic group show that asks about the future of the Caribbean region, featuring 14 artists from the region and its diaspora: Deborah Anzinger, Charles Campbell, Andrea Chung, Hulda Guzman, Deborah Jack, Louisa Marajo, Manuel Mathieu, Alicia Milne, Lavar Munroe, Angel Otero, Sheena Rose, Jamilah Sabur, Nyugen Smith, and Cristina Tufiño. The Other Side of Now will be on view from July 18, 2019 through June 7, 2020. This exhibition is co-curated by María Elena Ortiz, PAMM Associate Curator, and Dr. Marsha Peare, Cultural Theorist based in the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad.

In contemporary art, the Caribbean is often seen through the lens of its traumatic, colonial past and socioeconomic problems that linger in the present. The Other Side of Now seeks to think beyond narratives of catastrophe—both geographical and political—that continue to frame the region, asking instead: What might a Caribbean future look like? The exhibition invites artists from the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean to capture the future of the region as a tangible time and space.

Deborah Jack. water between us remembers, so we wear our history on our skin, long for a sea-bath and hope the salt will cure what ails us, 2016. Digital color video, 15 min. 42 sec. Courtesy the artist

In this exhibition, the Caribbean is conceptualized as both a complex spatial configuration and a temporal formation. Through video, sculpture, paintings, and installation works,The Other Side of Now illuminates ideas of survival, community, self-acceptance, environmental rights, and creative resourcefulness, painting a picture of the Caribbean region that edges toward a present-future.

“This exhibition is forward-thinking and progressive in its stance regarding the Caribbean and its diaspora,” said PAMM Associate Curator María Elena Ortiz. “PAMM is an institution that is dedicated to spotlighting underrecognized populations, and this outlook bolsters PAMM’s role in platforming art from the Caribbean in all its diversity and complexity.”

The Other Side of Now further demonstrates PAMM’s commitment to the presentation of art from underrepresented communities. In Miami, a city where a majority of Caribbean citizens immigrate to, PAMM is uniquely positioned to spotlight Caribbean artists’ voices.

In conjunction with The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, PAMM will release an illustrated bilingual publication that includes writings by Caribbean writers YOSS and Rita Indiana, and commissioned essays by Aja Monet, Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, Dr. Keith Nurse, Dr. Marsha Pearce, David Scott, and María Elena Ortiz.