Legal tender
On Cass’Mosha A. Centeno’s One Hundred Dollar Bill, shown as part of the popup exhibition #ayardexchange at
the temporary art space 27 Pembroke Street, Port of Spain,
2019
First published — translated into
Spanish as “Moneda de curso legal”, by David Puig — in ONTO #2: Arte y Capital,
2021
Night and the city
On Marlon Griffith’s POSITIONS + POWER, a mas
performance created in Port of Spain during Carnival 2014
First published in the catalogue for En Mas: Carnival and Performance Art of the
Caribbean, an exhibition at the Contemporary Art
Centre, New Orleans, 2015
How to be here
An essay on Alice Yard as a space for play
and a mechanism for engineering generosity
First published in You Are Here — Rethinking Residencies,
an e-book and website published in 2015 by the Factory of Art
and Design, Copenhagen, following on from a seminar on the same topic in
June 2013
A fine balance
On Into the Mix, an exhibition at the Kentucky Museum
of Art and Craft, 2012
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, November 2013
The shape of a name
A profile of Sandra Brewster
First published in Caribbean
Beat, May/June 2013
Work in process
[PDF download]
On recent works by Christopher Cozier
First published in the catalogue for Christopher Cozier: In Development, an
exhibition at David Krut Projects NY, January 2013
Making progress
On Christopher Cozier: In
Development, an exhibition at David Krut Projects NY
First published in Caribbean
Beat, January/February 2013
Mas by other means
A profile of Marlon Griffith
First published in Caribbean
Beat, January/February 2013
Let it come down
On Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip
. . . Frank Bowling’s Poured Paintings, 1973–8, an
exhibition at Tate Britain, April 2012 to April 2013
First published in Caribbean
Beat, November/December 2012
All the right moves
A profile of Ebony G. Patterson
First published in Caribbean
Beat, September/October 2012
Body counts
On Ebony G. Patterson’s 9 of 219, a public performance
in Port of Spain, 2011
First published in the online catalogue for Patterson’s Cheap
and Clean: Interrogating Masculinities Project,
2012
Portrait of the artist
On recent work by Dhiradj Ramsamoedj
First published in ARC
no. 2, April 2011
That is mas
On the influence of Trinidad’s mas traditions on contemporary
artists
First published in the catalogue for Rockstone and Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian
Art, 2011
Moving pictures
On the painted minibuses of Paramaribo
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, July 2010
Still from “The Life
Movie”
On Christopher
Cozier’s Now Showing
First published in Antilles,
the Caribbean Review of
Books blog, 20 July, 2010
A place to stand
On artist Dhiradj
Ramsamoedj’s Adjie Gilas
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, May 2010
Guiana dreams
On literary and visual images of the Guianas in the Western
imagination, and their continuing relevance to the region’s
contemporary artists
First published in Paramaribo
SPAN, a book on art and visual culture in Suriname,
coinciding with an exhibition of works by Surinamese and Dutch
contemporary artists, 2010
Diary: visiting Soeki
Irodikromo
Conjunction: G-Star/WI
STAR
Diary: in Ellen
Ligteringen’s studio
Diary: meeting Pierre
Bong A Jan
Conjunction: street
posters/Ravi Rajcoomar
Conjunction: classical
details
Diary: looking for the
red lights
Project: Een
Lekkers,
by Ellen Ligteringen
Project: Ingiwinti, by Sri Irodikromo
Notes and short essays on contemporary art and visual culture
in Suriname
From the Paramaribo SPAN
blog, 2009–2010
Between a fantasy and a
hard place
On La Fantasie, a public installation
by Marlon Griffith, Jaime Lee Loy, and Nikolai Noel
Written in August 2009
Herd instincts
On T’in Cow Fat Cow and
mas as protest art
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, February 2009
Paradise™
On adapting Christopher Cozier’s Available at All Leading Stores for a
J’Ouvert performance
First published in the Available
at All Leading Stores e-catalogue,
for the 2009 Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan
Riotous assemblage
On The Kingdom of
the Blind, an exhibition by Hew Locke at the Institute
of International Visual Arts (Iniva), London, 2008
First published in The Caribbean Review of Books,
November 2008
Working notes: On Christopher Cozier’s Tropical
Night drawings
First published in
the catalogue of Little Gestures: From the Tropical
Night Series, an exhibition at Dartmouth College,
2007
On the map
On the contemporary
art scene in Trinidad and the presence of Peter Doig and Chris
Ofili
A version of this piece was published in Culture +
Travel, January/February 2008
The dream of Cuba
On Mi Querida Patria, a
solo exhibition by Sabrina Marques at Real Art Ways, April to
May 2007
First published in the exhibition catalogue
An island is a world
On Infinite Island: Contemporary
Caribbean Art, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, November 2007
As we forgive
On artist Nikolai Noel’s Forgiveness
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, August 2007
Make a space
A dialogue with artist Christopher Cozier on the significance
of the 2006 Galvanize contemporary arts programme
First published in the Trinidad
and Tobago Review, November 2006
Taking note
On Christopher Cozier’s Tropical Night drawings
First published in The Caribbean Review of Books,
August 2006
Discomfort zone
On Christopher Cozier, his Tropical
Night drawings, and Richard Fung’s documentary Uncomfortable
First published in Modern
Painters, June 2006
Masman
A profile of Peter Minshall
First published in Caribbean
Beat, May/June 2006
Artists of the streets
Profiles of thirteen designers from the “Golden Age” of
Trinidad Carnival, co-written with Dylan Kerrigan
First published in Caribbean
Beat, January/February 2004
Interrupting the
conversation: Trinidad’s StudioFilmClub
Essay from the catalogue of Peter Doig’s StudioFilmClub exhibition
at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Zurich Kunsthalle, 2005
First published in StudioFilmClub,
2005
Other profiles and essays
Failure
A short essay accompanying a curated and annotated
collection of digital artefacts
From the Keywords for Caribbean Studies project,
curated by Kelly Baker Josephs and Roopika Risam, 2020
There are no
islands without the sea: being a compendium of
facts, fictions, names, etymologies, lyrics, and
questions, in the form of a broken-up archipelago
[PDF download]
An essay, if you can call it that, on some aspects of
Caribbean history, c. 80,000,000 BC to the present
First published in Relational
Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean
Archipelago, ed. Tatiana Flores and Michelle A.
Stephens, 2017
Remembering Derek
Walcott
An obituary of the St. Lucian poet
First published in Caribbean
Beat, May/June 2017
Naipaul’s letters
between a father and son (and mother and sister)
[PDF download]
An essay on re-editing V.S. Naipaul’s family correspondence
First published in Caribbean
Quarterly: A Journal of Caribbean Culture, vol. 62,
nos. 3 and 4, September–December 2016, special issue on
Caribbean Literary Archives, ed. Alison Donnell
Literary confessions
and festival contradiction
On the contradictions of running a literary festival; a
“provocation” commissioned for the International Literary
Showcase and published in October 2016
V.S. Naipaul: the
writer as “last free man”
An essay on Naipaul’s critical stance
First published in The
Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature,
ed. Michael A. Bucknor and Alison Donnell, 2011
Understanding ourselves
An essay on the mission and motives of The Caribbean
Review of Books
First published in sx salon
7, December 2011, as part of a discussion of Caribbean book
reviewing
Tomorrow and the world
An essay on reading Martin Carter while following the January
revolution in Egypt
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, January 2011
Could you be loved
A review of Children of
God, a feature film directed by Kareem Mortimer
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, September 2010
“Reading list” essays
from The Caribbean Review
of Books (originally published unsigned):
Art ancestors
(books on Schouten,
Belisario, Cazabon), May 2009
Browsing the ether
(Caribbean literary
journals online), February 2009
Frankly speaking
(books of interviews
with Caribbean writers), November 2008
Yours etc. (collections of Caribbean
writers’ correspondence), August 2008
For the birds
(field guides to
birds of the Caribbean region), May 2008
Into the wild
(early travellers’
accounts of the Guianas), February 2008
From the life
(Caribbean
biographical reference works), November 2007
Shadowing Sir Vidia
(books with
biographical information on V.S. Naipaul), August 2007
The man with the
butterfly tattoo
A profile of the French bagnard
and writer Henri Charrière, a.k.a. Papillon
First published in Caribbean
Beat, November/December 2009
The caterpillar lover
A profile of the seventeenth-century German artist and
naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian
First published in Caribbean
Beat, March/April 2009
The distraction of
Walcott vs. Naipaul
First published in the guardian.co.uk Books blog, 5 June, 2008
On Lloyd Best
(1934-2007): a personal note
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, May 2007
Undiscovered countries
A short profile of Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo
First published in Caribbean
Beat, March/April 2004
His way in the world
A short profile of Guyanese writer Ruel Johnson
First published in Caribbean
Beat, May/June 2003
What “Caribbean” can mean
An essay on Caribbean Beat
and a magazine’s role in shaping cultural
identity
First published in the Guyana Arts Journal, volume 2, number 2, March 2006
Still news
A short essay on Trinidad’s crônistas
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, February 2006
Imaginary islands
A short essay on the imaginary territories of West Indian
literature
First published in The
Caribbean Review of Books, May 2006
Reportage, commentary,
travel
Amours de voyage; or,
notes from an occasional traveller
Notes, anecdotes, and observations, mostly from my blog
Kaieteur dreaming
On travelling up the Potaro River to Kaieteur Falls, Guyana
First published in Caribbean
Beat, March/April 2015
Beyond the beyond
On visiting the Shetland Islands, Scotland
First published in Caribbean
Beat, November/December 2014
Finding the centre
On Mexico City
First published in Caribbean
Beat, July/August 2014
Green days by the river
On visiting Marajó Island, Brazil
First published in Caribbean
Beat, November/December 2013
“With you giving them
the real stuff”
On my grandfather’s letters and the link between archiving and
epistemic autonomy
From my blog, 10 August, 2010
The view from Mt
Scenery
On visiting Saba
First published in Caribbean
Beat, January/February 2010
The
Nobbie Stories for Children and Adults, by C.L.R. James, ed.
Constance Webb
November 2007
Art
and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and
His Worlds,
ed. Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro
Martinez-Ruiz
February 2008
Cuba:
Art and History from 1868 to Today, ed. Nathalie Bondil
August 2008
From
the Trinidad and
Tobago Review
C.L.R.
James: Cricket, the Caribbean and World Revolution, by Farrukh Dhondy
April 2002
Collected Poems, 1937–1989,
by A.J. Seymour
May 2002
A
Rough Climate, by E.A. Markham
June 2002
A
New World Order: Selected Essays, by Caryl Phillips
July 2002
The
Writer and the World: Essays, by V.S. Naipaul
October 2002
The
Autograph Man, by Zadie Smith
November 2002
Life
of Pi, by
Yann Martel
December 2002
Sketches
of Amerindian Tribes, 1841–1843, by Edward A. Goodall
February 2003
Abandoning
Dead Metaphors: The Caribbean Phase of Derek Walcott’s
Poetry, by
Patricia Ismond
March 2003
Primacy
of the Eye: The Art of Stanley Greaves, by Rupert Roopnaraine
February 2006
(A shorter version of this review appeared in the February
2006 issue of The Caribbean
Review of Books)
(Mostly
short)
reviews from
Caribbean Beat
Half
a Life, by
V.S. Naipaul
November/December 2001
Sugar
and Slate,
by Charlotte Williams
September/October 2002
The
Autobiography of Alfred H. Mendes
January/February 2003
Waiting
for Snow in Havana, by Carlos Eire
May/June 2003
Bethany
Bettany,
by Fred D’Aguiar
July/August 2003
In
the Kingdom of Light: Collected Poems, by M.G. Smith
November/December 2003
The
Mask of the Beggar, by Wilson Harris
January/February 2004
Between
Silence and Silence, by Ian McDonald
May/June 2004
Lagahoo
Poems, by
James Christopher Aboud
January/February 2005
The
Prodigal,
by Derek Walcott
March/April 2005
Thank
God It’s Friday, by B.C. Pires
November/December 2005
Dancing
in the Dark, by Caryl Phillips
March/April 2006
University
of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose, by Martin Carter, ed.
Gemma Robinson
July/August 2006