National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston February 24, 2016–June 1, 2017 The history of the exhibition that is today the Jamaica Biennial can be traced back to the All Jamaica Art Exhibition, which was first presented in 1938. Hosted by a private group, that exhibition was part of a rising tide of nationalist sentiment that characterized  Continue Reading »

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale February 12–June 18, 2017 One of the first photographs in Catherine Opie’s 700 Nimes Road depicts the iconic Andy Warhol screenprint of the actress Elizabeth Taylor. The supersaturated colors of the print dominate the left side of the photograph. An inscription, “to elizabeth with much love Andy Warhol,” along with  Continue Reading »

AFTER CHARL LANDVREUGD, MOVT NR. 8: THE QUALITY OF 21 Dream of rooms, forgetting, how to see. As silent as paintings. Space, in which We build houses. For all of us to be. Camera of thought, as if remembering. Tomorrow’s colony naked and faint. His moon is behind me, changing. Come true. Behold our solid  Continue Reading »

Ghazals Upon Returning to Hispañiola 1. It was diaspora or death: the oligarchs took everything, the Americans gawked. To think that a small place could fit so much hate; so we left. Carter helped, and for twenty years of Sunday’s the east river was tinfoil our mothers tried to smooth out, the towers on Broadway  Continue Reading »

Any valuable object, in order to appeal to our sense of beauty must conform to the requirements of beauty and expensiveness both. This cannon of expensiveness also affects our tastes in such a way as inextricably to blend the mark of expensiveness… with the beautiful features of the object and to subsume the resultant effect  Continue Reading »

FLORIDA I look out my window to the sea. For fifteen years I’ve wanted an ocean view, and now I finally have one. But on stormy days the white waves seem to crash too close to my window. Everyone agrees South Florida is sinking, the limestone below so porous not even a seawall can save  Continue Reading »