In the process: the third interview

In the process is an online interview series developed by AICA Southern Caribbean, a regional chapter of the International Art Critics Association. Each month we spotlight the work of artists from the Caribbean. Conversations delve into the ideas and experiences of creative practitioners, exploring their art-making process and the ongoing work of creating and communicating meanings.

A woman’s world

The third interview of the series in the process, brings together four young artists from the French-speaking Caribbean: Gwladys Gambia, Kelly Sinnapah-Mary, Louisa Marajo and Tessa Mars and two independent curators who are members of the AICA-SC, Barbara Prezeau-Stephenson and Matilde dos Santos. Young artists all have multidisciplinary and hybrid practices. Committed artists, art is a vehicle for them to raise awareness and fight against violence against women, sexual discrimination and social or environmental injustice.

This conversation will broadcasted in French only on Saturday February 27 at 1 p.m. EST (6 p.m. GMT), on YOUTUBE (link) and on facebook (link). The chat will remain open to take into account the questions from the public.

The artists

Gwladys Gambie (Fort de France, 1988). Lives and works in Martinique. Graduated from DNSEP (Master) in 2014. Gwladys’ work explores her own body and revolves around the character Manman Chadwon (manam sea urchin), a kind of fictional deity created by the artist. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, embroidery or costume making, the artist creates organic forms, bodily and bristling with quills. Gwladys was selected and has participated in series of residencies, including in 2018, Creation in progress, initiated by Ateliers Médicis in Guadeloupe and Caribbean Linked V organized by Atelier 89 ‘and Fresh Milk, in Aruba. Then The Fountainhead Residency, in Miami (2019) and most recently the Catapult residency at home, part of the Catapult grant for the Caribbean program. Gwladys Gambie has participated in the international exhibitions Désir Cannibale at the Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami, as part of the Tout Monde Festival (2019), and in the Mercosur on-line biennial (2020).

Gwladys Gambie, Poison, 2019, encre sur papier, collage, 60x80cm

Louisa Marajo (Fort de France, 1987) Lives and works in Paris. Graduated from DNSP at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Saint-Etienne in 2010, with a stint at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe, Germany, she completed her training with a Master of Fine arts at La Sorbonne in Paris. Her work explores the construction of the world from debris, forming a continuous and chaotic visual partition in which uncertain forms evolve and transform. Since 2015, Louisa Marajo has been working on a series of scalable installations inside her studio, creating a perpetual abyss of representations of this same space. She experiments with structural and organic chaos, superimposing images of Sargassum pollution on the tangle of a world between rubble and architecture. Louisa has participated in exhibitions at the Perez Art Museum and the Little Haiti cultural complex in Miami, at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery in New York, as well as at the 1-54 Art Fair in London. In 2020 she was selected for the Dakar Biennale, Senegal (postponed)

Louisa Marajo, The Awakening of the wave – detail. Installation in-situ, technique mixte – Perez Art Museum, Miami – 2019

Tessa Mars (Port au Prince, 1985) Lives and works in Port-au-Prince. Graduated in visual arts from the University of Rennes 2, France, in 2006. Back in Haiti, Tessa Mars works with the AfricAmerica association, and curators Barbara Prezeau and Giscard Bouchotte. Bouchotte later selected her to participate in the traveling exhibition Haiti, Kingdom of this World (2011), initially presented at the Agnès b. in Paris, and that subsequently became the first Haitian pavilion at the Venice Biennale the same year. In 2012 following a road accident that led to a long hospitalization, she began to represent her body in her works. In 2015 while in residence at the Alice Yard space in Trinidad and Tobago, she created the character « Tessalines », her alter ego. In 2017, she participated in the Residency Unlimited supported by Davidoff Art Initiative in New York and in 2018, she participated in the tenth Berlin Biennale. Tessa Mars is currently in artistic residency at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts – Amsterdam (Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten) for a period of two years.

Tessa Mars, ‘A Vision of Peace, Harmony, and Good Intelligence I’ (2020) © Courtesy of the artist and Caribbean Art Initiative

Kelly Sinnapah Mary (Guadeloupe, 1980). Lives and works in Guadeloupe. She graduated in art at the Faculty of Art of Toulouse. The artist subtly questions the relationships of domination, especially those exerted on women. Her iconic installation Vagina recreates and subverts the hushed and soft atmosphere of a young girl’s room by filling it with images of domination, such as the figure of the penis, vagina-shaped pillows riddled with spikes etc. Subsequently in the series notebook of no return, she explored in a very delicate and distanced way, the question of identity, especially Hindu identity, highlighting one of the most obliterated components of the memories of the French Antilles. The concepts addressed by the artist are plastically translated by the use of several techniques such as drawing, installation, video, sewing, embroidery, photography or performance. Since 2011, Kelly has participated in many prestigious group exhibitions at the Perez Art Museum, MoCADA, Little Haiti Cultural Center, IDB, Prizm Art Fair, Musée de l’Homme, Fondation Clément, Macte, …

Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Notebook, bible study, acrylique sur toile, 70cmx40cm, 2019