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Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice

'Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice' is an online research series devoted to exploring the intersection of art, literature, and environment in the transnational Caribbean. A central objective is to highlight the role that artists and thinkers with Caribbean heritage have played in shaping a planetary consciousness that is uniquely suited to thinking through the ecological emergencies of the present. 

Importantly, the series is not bound by chronological focus, but supports research that draws transhistorical connections between the colonial era, the period of independence and the contemporary. The climatic phenomena that currently make the Caribbean one of the most ecologically vulnerable regions in the world are inextricable from the history of this region as a site of colonial extraction and exploitation.

Today, as the Caribbean remains at risk of devastating forms of neo-colonial resource extraction, growing numbers of artists and scholars are turning to the politics of ecology to advocate for the region’s effective decolonisation as well as for more sustainable futures for the world at large. This vindication of the Caribbean as a frontline of planetary survival has prompted a reassessment of the work of historic authors and artists (from Sylvia Wynter to Édouard Glissant, from Aubrey Williams to Wifredo Lam and Everald Brown) who placed the natural world at the forefront of the struggle against colonialism. ‘Biotic Resistance: Eco-Caribbean Visions in Art and Exhibition Practice’ takes stock of these invaluable theoretical and activist engagements, and reflects upon their implications through a transdisciplinary approach to art history.

4/11/21 - Roots and Routes
11/11/21 - Agro-Utopias
18/11/21 - Tidalectics
25/11/21 - Extraction
29/11/21 - Roundtable