Forecast Form
By Gervais Marsh
The complexities of the Caribbean expand beyond historical commonalities and cultural ties. Rather than attempt to condense artwork emerging from this region and its diaspora into a superficial idea of shared themes and visual representations, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s to Today weaves a far richer conversation that explores a multitude of distinct voices. The exhibition engages the Caribbean across various locations and temporalities, delving into modes of thought, being, and responses that emanate from the complexities and varying conceptions of the region. Thoughtfully curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with curatorial assistant Iris Colburn, and curatorial fellows Isabel Casso and Nolan Jimbo, the exhibition is rhizomatic in its threads of critique and reflection, using the dynamism of the weather as a metaphor to bring together thirty-seven artists who are invested in both the potential and contradictions of the Caribbean.
There is a measured pacing throughout the exhibition with subtle connections between works in each room, an attention to intricate visual conversations and notes of abstraction. The composition of lines on Zilia Sánchez’s sculptural, bodily landscape Lunar con tatuaje (1968–69) gestures to the labyrinth of detailed marks in Tomm El-Saieh’s Cursive Grid (2017–18) and are complemented by the layering of faint images abstracted into the ruby, magenta, and vermillion hues of Frank Bowling’s Bartica (1968–69). Inconspicuously positioned throughout Forecast Form are photographs from Ana Mendieta’s Silueta Works in Mexico (1973–77), each imbued with the absence-presence that the artist often explored and a haunting amplified after her death. Mendieta’s silhouette photographs ground the other works around them, such as the bodily articulation in the sand filled with seaweed that speaks to the cyclical ebb and flow of the ocean tide in Zilia Sánchez’s video encuentrismo-ofrenda o retorno (2000), an exchange of offerings between the water and the shore. ( … )