Gestures of The Unseen

Gestures of the Unseen is an abstract and semi-abstract painting show bringing together stories of migration, memory and history. With an anchor artwork by the late Bahamian-American artist Purvis Young (1943-2010), this exhibition connects three emerging artists and shows  their own relationships  with islands across the Caribbean: Debra Cartwright (Bahamas-USA), John Reno Jackson (Cayman Islands) and Demetrius Wilson (Haiti-USA).

The Caribbean is habitually aligned with realism, resulting in figurative painting and the desire to portray the geographical natural beauty of our surroundings. However, there is also a strong tradition of non-representational abstract and representational -abstract works, often created as an offshoot of spiritual practice or by self-taught artists that therefore remain less acknowledged or appreciated. With a complex history of movement both in and out of the region—from the historic trauma of the transatlantic slave trade, to the quest for a better life through migration, to the contemporary brain drain—we become more diasporic and lose track of our stories. Shared histories and connections sink into obscurity only to resurface in disparate places, connected by the invisible umbilical cord: “Gestures of the Unseen” aims to reclaim and reconnect both people and practice.

Although this group of painters ranges across decades and a broad geographic area–one born in the region, two first-generation and one second-generation American, from The Bahamas, The Cayman Islands, and Haiti–all are connected through the shared history of the Caribbean and the United States or UK. Our history is one of displacement, migration, and two-fold compromise and loss of culture, both lamented and salvaged through their powerful works, where abstract gesture communicates both the intuitive and the invisible as well as their unseen connection to home.