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Artist Natalie Butler stands with her installation piece, 'Import', which is included in the 'Curator's Eye' exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Sana Rose, Contributor
The following is an interview with Dr. Lowery Stokes Simms, executive director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, United States and the curator of the exhibition, Curator's Eye I: Install/In the Moment/In Site currently running at the National Gallery of Jamaica. The show features 14 installations by 14 artists.
SR: What is your general view of Jamaican art?
LSS: I've been privileged to know about the Jamaican art scene since the mid-1970s and over the years, I got to know many of the prominent people in the Jamaican art world. So it's been interesting to see how over the last 30 years Jamaican art has been able to both maintain some very traditional ideas of what Jamaican art is in its subject matter but at the same time entertain new ideas and then bring a Jamaican twist to them.
I think that was the function of many of the artists going to school in the U.S., England and in other places in Europe and coming back.
Last March when I was working on Curator's Eye, the whole question of whether or not contemporary forms are imposed on Jamaica or whether or not they form a disruption in this notion of the development of a national school has been a very dominant topic of the conversation. From my point of view, these ideas refresh, enliven and push Jamaican art into the future because all the artists who adopt these modes of post-modernism, whether its photo-based work, installation or performance, are bringing their Jamaican experiences to them so in that sense, I find the Jamaican art scene to be one of the strongest in the Caribbean.
SR: In relation to the National Gallery exhibition, 'Six Options: Gallery Spaces Transformed' in 1985 that focused installation and site-specific work, how does 'Curator's Eye' I depart from or add to the information or experience of this kind of art in Jamaica?
LSS: Well I think in general it continues the history and probably serves to prod peoples' memories because persons have forgot that exhibition. It was almost 20 years ago and there's a whole generation of students particularly from the art school who would not have had any knowledge of it.
So I think that Six Options in a way was the first showcasing of that kind of work in Jamaica. What I found to my surprise is that Curator's Eye I not only reminds people of Six Options but also extends it and really shows the growth and interest in installation work and most of the artists have said to me privately that they've just been waiting for the opportunity for somebody to give them a space and say, "It's yours, make something of it."
In Six Options, they had four Jamaicans and two African-American artists. This time we have 14 artists (12 of them living on the island and two expatriates, Nari Ward and Albert Chong) and all of these artists, whether they are dedicated to installation like Dr. Boxer, Petrona Morrison or Natalie Butler, or they are sculptors, photographers and painters, are interested in finding a new way to exhibit their work, to explore their ideas in the third dimension and encourage the public to see their art as a cohesive whole rather than just one piece on a pedestal or a painting on a wall.
SR: What is your curatorial statement for this exhibition? What do you want to say to viewers?
LSS: At first, my curatorial statement was to make the public aware that installation is a very strong tendency in the arts but as I've engaged all the various discourses about Jamaican art, I just want to reiterate the fact that not all art-making has to be commodity-based.
People need to understand that this project is really important in terms of propelling Jamaican art to the next stage, not only to identify a genre that's very strong but also maybe to open up some possibilities particularly to students.
The great thing about installation is that it becomes a form in which artists can percolate and explore ideas and they're given an opportunity to be their own curators in a sense.
That does not necessarily mean that everybody in Curator's Eye I will continue to do installation but all of the artists have talked about how this exercise has propelled them to a different place and I think that every artist periodically needs a moment of clarity.
Once you identify your talent and the form you are going to use, you can go along and have successes but you need to continue to grow so you look for opportunities where that can happen.
SR: You have said that each artist is really the curator of their own space. Would you say that as the curator of the entire exhibition that you have relinquished some of your control over the end product, which is a very risky situation?
LSS: Yes. It is very risky and I think that that's the interesting thing about installation work, because many of the artists showed me models and gave me diagrams and we discussed different ideas and then in the end, the work was totally different when they began working in the space but that's part of the excitement of it.
In many ways, Dr. Boxer and Petrina Dacres, who are associated with the gallery, acted as my surrogates, shepherding things along, making decisions to change spaces and having dialogues with the artists about the specifics of their installations but the three of us knew ultimately that each artist would have complete control over their space.
I think that's the inherent part of installation that as a curator you relinquish control and you become a collaborator with the artist.
My philosophy as a curator is that I've always privileged the artist's voice.
SR: Do you consider installation art to be part of the general development of art or do you see it as being the ultimate art form?
LSS: I don't think that installation is the ultimate art form. In many ways, people think that video and Internet/cyber art are probably the ultimate but I'm sure that you can't say that there is an ultimate art form because artists will continue to use different media.
I think that installation has a way of engaging people in the world and extending the art experience outside of the cloister the museum and gallery spaces that are very much a part of the legacy of modern art.
A lot of these art forms, particularly installation and performance, came out of the Dadaists and the Surrealists in the beginning of the last century where the idea was to totally upset, reverse and challenge these polite, very bourgeois notions of art and take the creative experience into the streets or into unexpected places and have people confront a disruption in their usual routine a kind of interventionist role.
SR: How should viewers approach Curator's Eye I in terms of installation art's interventionist role?
LSS: People have to drop their preconceptions of what the 'art-going' experience is because it's going to be very different here. When they come into the gallery to see all the installations, they're going to go into different rooms; they're going to shift into different worlds.
What they need to do is not only focus on the objects but also the ambiance for the objects. They viewer has to bring more than just their eyes and their feet to the experience but also their noses, their ears, their whole beings to understand what these artists are trying to say with their works.
SR: To what extent has Curator's Eye I fulfilled your vision?
LSS: What I wanted to do with this Curator's Eye was to fulfill the vision that the National Gallery had for the purpose of the exhibition, which I interpreted as being a catalytic element in the annual exposition of Jamaican art to perhaps stimulate debate and a little controversy but also to make people look at Jamaican art and an aspect of Jamaican art differently. I think that from that point, it's been very successful beyond my wildest dreams.
