Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago offers a reading of twenty-first century artistic production of the insular Caribbean that employs the archipelago as an analytical framework. While it is common for scholars to stress the region’s heterogeneity, with its variegated colonial history and extraordinary diversity, this volume accompanies an exhibition that focuses on locating thematic continuities in the art of the Caribbean islands. Challenging the conceptual boundaries imposed on spaces that are geographically contiguous and share similar ecologies and historical processes, the essays gathered here employ the trope of the archipelago to counter the understanding of the Caribbean as discontinuous, isolated, hermetic, and beyond comprehension.
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA
