Deering Estate Arts Eleven Voices Exhibit Catalogue | Page 14

CURATOR ’ S STATEMENT

ROSIE GORDON-WALLACE

While there are several projects that trace the production of the Caribbean as a space to be consumed , the conversation about Africa conjures mystery and vastness and tradition . So too did the conversations of ELEVEN VOICES force me to think of place both here and there .

This was not an exhibition dissimilar to Erica James ’ s What is Africa to Me ? mounted in the Bahamas in 2006 . Hers was a personal show that drew from the collection of Kay Crawford , an American living in Nassau that started collecting African work , some South African , as well as East and West African . “ It ’ s a question of history and it ’ s a question of identity that is beyond race , and as a culture and a country we need to have a conversation on Africa ”. 1

ELEVEN VOICES aimed to incite a conversation about cultural struggles , memory , and identity happening among contemporary artists . We hoped to have a conversation with African aesthetics , perhaps materials and certainly with the politics , identity , culture , and the impact that Africa has had on the Diaspora in Miami . “ We have been mixing up race and culture in a certain way that needs to be teased out ”, says James , the then-director of the National Gallery of the Bahamas . What ’ s South Africa to Miami ? What historical influences , connections , contemporary possibilities , practices and imaginaries , knowledge , cognition and social influences has the country had on us as immigrants ?

Artists were invited to reconsider the practices , { borrowed } habits , proverbs , models , revisions , and rhetoric of politics in contemporary art and curating . We conversed about themes of epistemic