In 2020, as monuments to problematic figures were toppled around the globe, many in the Caribbean wondered when statues would fall in their country. It happened first in Martinique in July 2020, when activists tore down a statue of Napoleon’s wife Joséphine. Then, in October 2021, a man took a sledgehammer to the Christopher Columbus monument in Nassau in The Bahamas. In January this year, the statue of Ponce de León in San Juan’s San José Plaza was torn down just hours before the Spanish king was due to arrive in Puerto Rico. For many, these colonial symbols represent a history that should not be erased, and they see the toppling of these statues as a disturbance to visitors to the islands.
How outsiders perceive the Caribbean is sometimes crucial for economic survival: In a region where tourism is an important source of revenue, fulfilling expectations comes with the territory. But the art scenes in Nassau and San Juan have been building on years of hard work to expand or counter those expectations, both at home and abroad. Art communities on both archipelagos are determined to provide alternative narratives (or any narrative at all) about art and life in the region. The two scenes share the challenge of a lack of long-term support, but projects and initiatives vary in spirit and organization.
In a recent exhibition at the relatively new TERN gallery in Nassau, London-based Bahamian artist Blue Curry presented a video of the man attacking the Columbus statue accompanied by the sound of a guitar. 1492–2022 (2022) is sonically subtle and visually forceful in its critique of tourism in relation to colonialism. ‘Growing up on an island affects you: to be able to circumnavigate and actually see the place as an object,’ says Curry. Fresh from the exhibition ‘Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now’ at Tate Britain, he dares to directly criticize the tourism industry.
Run by Founding Directors Lauren Perez and Amanda Coulson, and Gallery Manager Jodi Minnis, TERN is aware of the necessity of cultivating a local audience while maintaining an international presence. The gallerists are determined to represent the region without ‘getting pigeonholed into one view of the Caribbean, market-wise or art-wise. The Caribbean is not only one thing,’ says Coulson.
Establishing The Bahamas as a center where visitors experience Bahamian art, culture, and heritage beyond the typical sun, sand, and sea has long been a goal of Doongalik Studios, a gallery that is also is home to the nonprofit groups Creative Nassau, which advocates for creative tourism, and Transforming Spaces, an annual art tour of galleries in Nassau. The shift toward rebranding The Bahamas as a cultural destination is mostly driven by institutions – national, grassroots, and private – although many also wonder how committed the government is to supporting more cultural projects around the archipelago.
Established venues include The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB); the private collection at the D’Aguilar Art Foundation; Contemporary Art Bahamas; and Project ICE, an incubator and art studio founded by artist Antonius Roberts. The country’s splashiest space is The Current at Baha Mar, a 2,000-room luxury resort and casino, which opened to the public in 2017. Its art initiatives include commissions, a gallery, and curatorial services run by artist and curator John Cox, who was a curator at NAGB before leaving to join Baha Mar and is currently navigating collaborations between both venues. ‘Whether or not you work in hospitality, if you do anything in The Bahamas, you work in hospitality,’ he explains. While some artists have actively avoided being pegged to the Caribbean and its tourism industry, they have also realized that they want to be Bahamian, in all their complexity. It’s all about ‘turning the sweater inside out and putting it back on,’ says Cox.
‘When I returned to work in The Bahamas, there were maybe four decent jobs in the arts, now there are about forty,’ says Coulson. To paraphrase a conversation with curator Natalie Willis during a 2017 visit, the aim now is to dismantle hierarchies and histories crafted by people who looked at Bahamians through racist, colonial, patriarchal lenses and ‘make ourselves present in three-dimensional vibrancy, too.’
In Puerto Rico, years of economic crises, austerity measures, mass emigration, the impact of hurricanes and earthquakes, and now the pandemic, should be reasons for the arts scene not to thrive. However, they seem to have simply punctuated a collaborative art scene that has seen a lot of growth in the past 25 years. One of the island’s most important art-builders was M&M Proyectos, a San Juan project space established by curator Michy Marxuach that was open from 1999 until 2004 and mounted biennials in 2000, 2002 and 2004. Raimundas Malašauskas, Pablo León de la Barra, Antonio Zaya, Allora & Calzadilla, Pedro Reyes, Carolina Caycedo, Julieta González, Beatriz Santiago, Federico Herrero, Jesús ‘Bubu’ Negrón, and Pablo Helguera are just a few of the artists and curators that passed through, opening a dialogue on contemporary art’s possibilities. Many introductions resulted in collaborations with lasting impact. In 2009, Marxuach, Tony Cruz Pabón, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz established Beta-Local, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting discourse and practice through programs including a residency and an experimental school. It has proven to be instrumental in developing artistic projects through its fellowship and regranting programs, and its networking power.
Over the years, an unofficial arts district has emerged around Santurce, a San Juan neighborhood where modern and historic buildings create a kaleidoscope of both urban decay and beautification. The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR) and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC), along with the newer Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar (MADMi) provide the institutional backdrop, while several artist studios and project spaces have grown into professional galleries. Initially a studio and exhibition space, El Kilómetro’s program includes collaborations with Latin American artists, exhibtions and film screenings. The gallery has expanded to a second venue, which includes a bar, Bar Cero Punto Dos, and recently opened 'Across The Horizon,' a show of female abstract artists featuring works by Awilda Sterling Duprey, Olga Albizu, Frances Gallardo, and Livia Ortiz. Another space is Pública, cofounded in 2018 by Naíma Rodríguez and curator Natalia Viera Salgado, it is a hip cultural center that presents established and emerging artists.
‘I’m glad that more and more spaces have opened and that they are more integrated into people’s daily lives,’ says Agustina Ferreyra, owner of the eponymous gallery in San Juan. Founded almost ten years ago, this year it returned to Santurce after three years in Mexico City with a triumphant show of works by Dalton Gata. Like its owner and many of its artists, the gallery has a hybrid identity that speaks to collaboration (it currently keeps a presence in Mexico through a partnership with Los Angeles’ Commonwealth and Council).
Artist and curator José López Serra, who runs Hidrante gallery, sees a small but vibrant art scene, but cites lack of funding as its major hindrance; ‘you can do well if you’re good at improvising and maintain a constant DIY spirit,’ he says. In recognition of this, the Mellon Foundation has provided multiyear financial and administrative support to artists and cultural workers who run art spaces and community projects through Maniobra, a partnership with Puerto Rico’s Center for Creative Economy. The three-year, eight-million-dollar initiative launched in May 2022 and employs 37 artists at 25 organizations across the Puerto Rican archipelago. Mellon, the Ford Foundation, and Flamboyan Arts Fund have all become major players in providing institutional support to local museums as well. The Puerto Rican Arts Initiative, another Mellon-funded project developed by Ramón Rivera Servera, Arnaldo Rodríguez Bagué, and José ‘Pepe’ Álvarez, has been a catalyst for performance and curatorial projects.
Besides El Kilómetro, other galleries are also deepening their roots and expanding their footprint. Hidrante, for example, highlights performance art and other site-specific practices that often cannot find space in traditional white cube spaces in San Juan (El Nuevo Hidrante is an additional gallery for more straightforward exhibitions). Embajada gallery, founded in 2015 by Manuela Paz and Christopher Rivera, bought a building in 2022; with so many displacement issues around housing and tax incentives that benefit foreign investors, owning a space shows deep commitment to developing the scene. In its inaugural exhibition, ‘Tamo Aquí (We Here)’, works by old friends and new collaborators spread around the house’s porch, rooms, and back patio. ‘Trying circumstances and limited resources associated with the politics and economics of colonialism are a given for both artists and most cultural institutions in the island,’ says MAC Director Marianne Ramírez Aponte. But for her, the scene has always been thriving, even with limited institutional support, little art press, and a lack of art education programs.
Toppling statues is certainly a bold gesture within the broader reckoning with colonialism and its continued impact here. But Bahamian and Puerto Rican artists, curators, and cultural workers, both at home and abroad, all contribute to the construction of fairer, better, more nuanced narratives.
Marina Reyes Francois a curator at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico (MAC).
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Credits for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. San Juan's Old Town. Photography by Christopher Gregory-Rivera for Art Basel. 2. Blue Curry,1492-2022, 2022. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and TERN Gallery. 3. The Beach in San Juan. Photography by Christopher Gregory-Rivera for Art Basel. 4. Installation view at Embajada's new space in San Juan. Photography by Christopher Gregory-Rivera for Art Basel