T&T artist Alex Kel­ly, a UWI grad­u­ate and part of the Grander­son Lab ini­tia­tive, re­cent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in Caribbean Linked III, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing three weeks of con­nec­tions, ex­changes, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with 11 oth­er young artists from through­out the Caribbean re­gion.

Caribbean Linked is a res­i­den­cy pro­gramme and art ex­hi­bi­tion or­gan­ised by Ate­liers '89 Foun­da­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ARC Inc and The Fresh Milk Art Plat­form Inc, its or­gan­is­ers said in a press re­lease.

Its main spon­sor is Sticht­ing DOEN with ad­di­tion­al sup­port from the Mon­dri­aan Foun­da­tion and the Prince Claus Fund. Since 2007 the foun­da­tion Ate­liers '89 has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for young artists to fol­low their dreams by pro­vid­ing ex­changes where they can de­vel­op their own work through the artist in res­i­dence pro­gramme, the teach­ing pro­gramme and by or­gan­is­ing sym­po­siums with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al artists, crit­ics and cu­ra­tors.

Caribbean Linked is an es­sen­tial means for build­ing aware­ness across the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of the Caribbean, the re­lease said. This res­i­den­cy project fo­cus­es on the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and crit­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion of younger artists by ex­pos­ing An­glo­phone, Fran­coph­o­ne, His­pan­ic and Dutch An­til­lean Artists to each oth­er.

T&T "needs a fa­cil­i­ty like Ate­liers '89 which has the nec­es­sary space and re­sources to house such an am­bi­tious project as Caribbean Linked III," the re­lease quotes Kel­ly as say­ing. "But not mere­ly for the ben­e­fit of [T&T]. Rather, for its po­ten­tial to ben­e­fit the re­gion. Much of my thought re­cent­ly has been oc­cu­pied with how I might fa­cil­i­tate the move­ment of artists re­gion­al­ly. Par­tic­u­lar­ly how one might go about ac­quir­ing the nec­es­sary spaces for projects like Caribbean Linked III to ex­ist in T&T.

"I un­der­stand now that my work does not on­ly re­main rel­e­vant in the con­text of my own coun­try but it can serve as an ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­gion. Per­haps what is more im­por­tant, is the re­al­i­sa­tion that what­ev­er ef­forts I might make to fur­ther the cause of se­ri­ous art mak­ing in T&T will po­ten­tial­ly have far reach­ing re­gion­al and glob­al con­se­quences."

Kel­ly's work in­ter­ro­gates the so­cial space of T&T, and pieces that were pro­duced for the Caribbean Linked III ex­hi­bi­tion con­tin­ued to ex­plore the coun­try's over-ac­cel­er­at­ed po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment post-in­de­pen­dence.

One de­tail of the fi­nal in­stal­la­tion–re­ferred to by Kel­ly as #forceripe–fea­tured 18 brown sand­wich bags lined in rows of three on a pal­let board. This vi­su­al al­ludes to the rit­u­al of plac­ing fruit such as an av­o­ca­do in a brown bag to en­cour­age it to ripen at a faster pace. The sym­bol­ism of the piece lies in prob­ing how T&T has al­so gone through var­i­ous prac­tices to ex­plic­it­ly quick­en the "ripen­ing" of its na­tion.

The no­tion of "Caribbean­ness" al­so fed in­to the ex­pan­sion of this theme dur­ing the res­i­den­cy, some­thing that was ig­nit­ed by the bond made with fel­low di­verse res­i­dents and the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the "force ripe" no­tion across the dif­fer­ent coun­tries.

This prompt­ed Kel­ly's height­ened aware­ness of the need for pol­i­cy mak­ers to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of cul­tur­al as­pects such as stim­u­lat­ing pub­lic art in the T&T space to fa­cil­i­tate crit­i­cal so­cial think­ing. The con­nec­tions of his artis­tic ideas and so­cial prac­tice with those he was work­ing along­side be­came sites of op­por­tu­ni­ty for non-tra­di­tion­al re­gion­al ex­change in the fu­ture.

"What my eyes have been opened to," Kel­ly is quot­ed as say­ing, "is the po­ten­tial for my coun­try to be part of a re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty that is not just loose­ly con­nect­ed by po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments but that has a shared in­ter­est based on the un­der­stand­ing that a sta­ble com­mu­ni­ty will un­doubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit the in­di­vid­ual."