Associação Cultural Videobrasil

As a part of the Public Programs, in the morning of October 8 (Thursday), the series of Meetings and Conversations of the 19^th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil welcomed the artist and co-director of the Fresh Milk contemporary art platform, Annalee Davis (Barbados), the editor of ARC magazine and chief curator of the Bahamas’ National Art Gallery, Holly Bynoe, and the assistant curator at Miami’s Pérez Art Museum, María Elena Ortiz (Puerto Rico), to discuss the Tilting Axis, with the curator and critic N’Goné Fall (Senegal) as moderator.

Recently established in Barbados by Annalee Davis and Holly Bynoe, Tilting Axis is a discussion platform designed to increase and enhance connections between professionals working at artist-run initiatives and institutions throughout the Caribbean, as well as build and redefine historical ties with the North and converse with strong emerging networks across the global South. Its partners include the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, USA and the international artist residency network Res Artis.

Annalee Davis, the first to speak, mentioned Joaquín Torres-Garcia’s Mapa Invertido (Inverted Map, 1943) and the rise of the Havana Biennale as symbols of the affirmation of the Global South and its position relative to the countries of the North. With Tilting Axis, she declares, “we intend to develop an action plan and a continuous collaboration to remove the Caribbean from its peripheral position and involve it in broader conversations about art.”

Holly Bynoe elaborated on the platform’s goals: “The commitment to transferring institutional knowledge and developing exhibitions and opportunities regionally and globally that the organizations involved have entered into is a goal we expect to help accomplish through the sustainability and the organic growth of Tilting Axis.”

María Elena Ortiz said “a department of the museum’s was already doing research into the region when we first connected, in 2013, with Tilting Axis.” She believes the region’s colonial histories, which make it so diverse, are reflected in how difficult it is to identify artists from the Caribbean: “many define themselves as African-American or British, for example.” The next Tilting Axis meeting will be hosted by the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, a strategy deemed crucial to integration and exchange between the USA and art made in the Caribbean.

The Festival’s chief curator, Solange Farkas lauded the travelling platform as a means of “shortening the distances between the islands and building a collaborative network in those countries.”