Roundtable Discussion: Tropical Is Political

Americas Society is pleased to present the Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime Roundtable Discussion, featuring Marina Reyes Franco, Curator of the Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), in conversation with artists Joiri Minaya, Oneika Russell, and Dave Smith about the effects of tourism and finance on subjects including economic policy, self-image, and artistic production. The roundtable discussion will take place in person at Americas Society on 680 Park Avenue, New York, NY.

Join us Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm

Americas Society

680 Park Ave.

New York, NY

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*Masks are required to attend this event

Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime investigates the ideas of natural and fiscal paradise, and the geographical coincidence of these concepts within the Caribbean region, where tourism and finance form the “visitor economy regime.” Tropical Is Political features works by 19 contemporary artists from the Caribbean and its diasporas. Through video, installation, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition underlines the effects of tourism and finance on subjects including economic policy, self-image, and artistic production. Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime will be on view in our galleries until December 17th, 2022.

Image credits (left to right, first gallery):

Dave Smith. Night and Day-O, 2012. Acrylic and glitter on canvas, 96 × 60 inches (228.6 × 152.4 cm). Courtesy of the artist

Viveca Vázquez. Las playas son nuestras (The Beaches Are Ours), 1989. Video, digital transfer from VHS tape, 4:09 minutes. Courtesy of the artist

Oneika Russell. Custom Velvet Souvenir Wall Hanging, 2022. Wall installation of embroidered, found fabric, fifteen wall hangings, each 17 × 14 inches (43.2 × 35.6 cm), overall dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist

About the Curator

Marina Reyes Franco is a Curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC). In 2010, she co-founded La Ene, an itinerant museum and collection. Recent projects include El momento del yagrumo and La llave / la clave, at MAC, San Juan; De Loiza a la Loiza, a MAC en el Barrio public art commission by Daniel Lind Ramos; Resisting Paradise, at Publica, San Juan and Fonderie Darling, Montreal; Watch your step / Mind your head, ifa-Galerie Berlin; The 2nd Grand Tropical Biennial in Loiza, Puerto Rico; Sucursal, MALBA in Buenos Aires, and numerous exhibitions at La Ene.

About the Artists

Joiri Minaya is a NY-based Dominican-United Statesian multidisciplinary visual artist whose work destabilizes historic and contemporary representations of an imagined tropical identity. She studied art at the ENAV (DR), the Chavón School of Design, and Parsons. Minaya has exhibited across the Caribbean, the United States, and internationally. She recently received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, a Jerome Hill Fellowship, and a NY Artadia award. She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan, Smack Mellon, LES Printshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, Art Omi, ISCP, Vermont Studio Center, New Wave, Silver Art Projects, and Fountainhead, among others. Minaya’s work is in the collections of the Santo Domingo Museo de Arte Moderno, the Centro León Jiménes, the Kemper Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and several private collections.

Oneika Russell is a visual artist, art educator, and cultural producer. She attended The Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica from 1999 to 2003 where she completed a diploma in the Painting Department. She has also studied Interactive Media at Goldsmiths College in London under The Centre for Cultural Studies and completed a DA in Art at Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto, Japan in 2014. She received The Commonwealth Arts & Crafts Award in 2007 and has done residencies at Residency Unlimited in New York, Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont, Post-Museum in Singapore, NLS in Kingston. She has exhibited in countries such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Norway, Japan, US, Canada, UK and Germany. Major presentations include At the Crossroads: Critical Film and Video from the Caribbean at Pérez Museum of Art Miami in 2016 and the 2018 DAKAR Biennial and Jamaican Pulse at The Royal West of England Academy, UK in 2017. Oneika has taught various digital art and fine art courses at the Edna Manley College between 2006 and is the Founding Director of Tide Rising Art Projects, an artist-led initiative.

Dave Smith is a visual artist whose work comments on contemporary American society, often through the lens of an Anglo-Caribbean sensibility. Smith attended Derby College of Art and Horsey College of Art, subsequently pursuing abstraction and semi-abstraction in his practice. He moved to the Bahamas in 1973 for a college teaching post, and while there, he experienced American movies "projected onto the Caribbean sky," which he cites as being the genesis for the collage-based paintings he’s done ever since. He moved to Los Angeles in 1990, supporting himself initially working in TV and motion picture studios as a union scenic artist. His work has been shown in the United States, Europe, and the Bahamas and is in several prestigious collections.