The Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House in the U.S.A, will host, ‘Timehri Transitions: Expanding Concepts in Guyana Art’. This exhibition introduces twelve international artists of Guyanese heritage.
Curator, U.S.-based Guyanese artist Carl E. Hazelwood, said, “I’ve chosen artists whose practice addresses everything from contemporary abstraction to works that bear a subtle political or cultural critique. For these artists, it’s no longer about periphery and centre. Practically everyone has access to the technological means of engaging with the borderless possibilities of visual knowledge.”
The artists are Damali Abrams, Carl Anderson, Dudley Charles, Victor Davson, Marlon Forrester, Gregory A. Henry, Siddiq Khan, Donald Locke, Andrew Lyght, Keisha Scarville, Arlington Weithers and Bernadette Persaud, who in Dec. 2012, was inducted into the Caribbean Hall of Fame.
Hazelwood noted that the Caribbean is known less for serious art and culture than for its lush physical presence, its paradoxical beauty and poverty, but has lately been receiving focused attention as possible undiscovered territory for new art and fresh aesthetic approaches. He added that several books published in the last few years have added in various degrees to scholarship surrounding the idea of an art peculiar to the region.
Organizers of major exhibitions recently on view in New York and elsewhere, seek to define the nature and historical sources of art and artists originating from within the archipelago. The artist believes that while the new exhibitions are beginning to provide a wider context for art created in the area, an English-speaking country like Guyana, situated on the Latin mainland of South America, receives scant attention in these visual extravaganzas—thus the need for exhibitions such as this one.
