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ARC Magazine announces the release of its second volume, which presents a collection of works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, St. Lucia, Haiti and Jamaica represent a variety of media including photography, film, painting, drawing, graphic design, illustration, performance and sculpture. ARC Magazine is a quarterly, independent visual arts magazine made possible by the subscription and support of its readers. ARC is “a projected motion that ascends, moves outward and beyond into a space of curiosity.” [Also see previous post ARC: New Art Magazine Launched.] The editors explain:
Issue II brings together the work of Andrea Chung, a Jamaican visual artist, who takes an ironic look at tourism and its neo-constructs in the Caribbean. Writer and critic Annie Paul has partnered with Chung to bring a haunting vision to life. A Hand Full of Dirt, the first feature by Barbadian filmmaker Russell Watson, is broken down to its core, and writer/filmmaker Tracy Assing examines funding and organizational structures in place to bring Caribbean filmmaking into 2011. Dalton Narine’s occupation with Peter Minshall’s practice presents a poetic revelation of an artist who for decades lost himself in his creations. Detailing Minshall in his incompleteness and genius, Narine provokes, tempts and enchants us with the power of mas.
Featured artist Brianna McCarthy’s collage and paper constructions strive to redefine our views of the Afro-Caribbean woman; working within repetition and beauty she constructs patterns that challenge the notions of its definition. Haitian artist Manuel Mathieu’s oeuvre is in the making and we expose it, where all good fictions, narratives and observations start, at the beginning. His paintings and drawings embrace a chaos and disorder, and memory, colliding with form. Dhiradj Ramsamoedj’s “Flexible Man” is scrutinized on its metal frame where he gently rocks. Its delicate costuming tells a story of the fierce hybridization of the Caribbean’s multiple cultures through an interweaving of languages and histories, his coat demanding attention and observation – delicate in its beauty – jovial and celebratory in its masquerade.
This collection makes visible these boundaries and the contemporary reality of globalization and its effects on our simultaneously expanding and narrowing fields of perception. Migration, tourism, hybridization, race, the landscape and gender are all referenced in the edition to define a space and a culture that cannot be simplified. The impossibility to make declarations on how to negotiate and reconcile loss, permission and ownership are peripheral spaces that are exposed with full understanding of accountability. We are attempting to understand our dispersal and the potential of ARC’s collective ideologies and content. Larger ideas of supporting emerging artists throughout the duration of their careers will be our first step in defining the collaborative space we occupy.
For more information you may contact Holly Bynoe at holly@arcthemagazine.com and Nadia Huggins at nadia@arcthemagazine.com
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Two Vincentians—Holly Bynoe, a visual artist and Nadia Huggins, a digital photographer—have just released the inaugural issue of ARC, a quarterly produced 80-page magazine focusing on works by contemporary artists practicing in the Caribbean and its diaspora. Featured artists from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica, Haiti, and Jamaica, represent a variety of media, including photography, film and video, painting, graphic illustration, mixed media, performance and poetry.
Bynoe and Huggins explain that ARC, as an acronym, refers to Art, Recognition, and Culture, but, they say, “we prefer to refer to it as a projected motion that goes up, out and beyond into a space of curiosity.”
Description: ARC presents a formula, an experiment, an imaginative body of curatorial work, which shows the trajectory and the motion of artists who practice within a contemporary space that has become scattered and nebulous, one without boundaries. Within their collective networks, they are finding it necessary to make the common man and the aficionado aware of possibilities in art, its evolution, trends and ‘personalities’. They also feel the need to provide a forum that celebrates creativity, its determination, dialogue and pleasure. It is their hope to inspire and give voice to a new generation of independent, emerging artists who remain fearless while battling the parts, fractions and whole of their varied cultures. ARC gives permission to artists to negotiate their own space by offering a neutral ground that permits discourse.
ARC frames its content in sections: SPOTLIGHT highlights emerging artists; 24FPS presents a survey of established and experimental filmmakers; THE GRADIENT features conversations between artists; and COLLECTIONS showcases the portfolios of three artists.
With this collection and philosophy in mind, ARC demonstrates the rich and dynamic undercurrents of the current generation of contemporary Caribbean artists and their global experiences. ARC Magazine—an independent visual arts quarterly, made possible by the subscription and support of its readers—will unveil a host of engaging features, interviews and portfolios in its upcoming issues.
Launchings for ARC will take place in January and February in New York City, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and will be available online, in select bookstores and other outlets.
For more information you may contact Holly Bynoe at holly@arcthemagazine.com and Nadia Huggins at nadia@arcthemagazine.com.
You can visit the magazine site at www.arcthemagazine.com
