Hitomi Iwasaki, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Queens Museum of Art and Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas speak with Leeza Ahmady about their research on the presence of Asia in Caribbean culture and art. Inspired by the occasion of the upcoming exhibition, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World (June 2012), Tam and Iwasaki set out to address the significant void of Asian cultural traces in the region.
The exhibition, which will span three venues in NYC, examines the visual arts and aesthetic development across the Caribbean, considering the histories of the Spanish, French, Dutch and English islands and their Diasporas. As a highly globalized region that has been consistently shaped by multiple paths of migration since European colonization in the 15th century and the transatlantic slave trade, the Caribbean is often portrayed as the ultimate symbol of “modernity” and globalization. However, not all of the multiple interrelations have received equal attention. What was seemingly an innocuous simple task of detecting Asian cultures in the New World turned out to be something entirely different. Too subtle is the yellow tint under the dominant shade of black…
This talk was recorded at the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Hub in Tribeca on March 13, 2012. The event was produced by ICI in collaboration with AhmadyArts. It is produced for radio by partnership with ARTonAIR.org.
