Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture hosted by me, alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Welcome back to another episode of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture. Of the many topics I have planned to discuss for the upcoming year, one of them is Caribbean art, and I mean that really in a way that's focal. You know, we definitely talk about Caribbean art when it comes to our Strictly Facts sound segment art when it comes to our Strictly Facts Sound segment.

Speaker 1: 0:46

But I really want to integrate, talking about these discussions of our culture and art and how it's really been integral to our evolution, to our expression. And so, at the end of the year approaching, I thought I'd give you a little bit of a teaser and what some of those conversations will look like for the end of the year, with an early glimpse of what to expect and maybe help you be on the lookout for some Caribbean art for 2025. And so helping me today is cultural professional and education manager at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, maya Matu, who, much like us here at Strictly Facts, is interested in art-based programming, storytelling and events in education, public outreach and the enlivening of community. It's truly a pleasure to have you, maya, but before we get started talking about the art and art history of the Cayman Islands, why don't you let our listeners know a little bit more about yourself, your connection to the Caribbean and what inspired your interest in the visual performance and art history of the Cayman Islands?

Speaker 2: 1:48

Sure, so first of all, thank you again for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here chatting with you today. So I'm actually not generationally Caymanian. I grew up on Grand Cayman and of course I call these islands home, but my mother is half Jamaican and half Bajan. My dad is Guyanese and both of my parents are call these islands home, but my mother is half Jamaican and half Bajan. My dad is Guyanese and both of my parents are cultural and arts professionals.

Speaker 2: 2:10

So that's quite broad, but I think they were quite firmly rooted in the performing arts, in the theater. My mother is an actress and a singer and a cultural manager and my dad is a director and a set designer and a cultural critic. They actually met at the Jamaica School of Drama at the Manly College when they were both teaching there, and so I think the love for culture and the interest in the study of culture was really at the heart of the family that I grew up in. I mean, the house was like stacked with books of cultural theory and you know my parents sang us folk songs to sleep and when I was as sick as a child, you know we'd curl up in the alcoves of the theater where my parents worked and everybody who came to Boxing Day parties were artists or cultural practitioners of some kind. So I like to think that going into this field wasn't a coincidence. In 2021, as I think we all do at some point in our lives I got really interested in sort of deep diving into my ancestry and through all of these, you know, questions with family members and digging through these websites and going through photos, I found that so many of my family members were performers of some kind, so they were classical pianists or they were calypsonians or they were catechists, and I think maybe some of my inclination towards the arts is really just deeply intrinsic and kind of unavoidable in a way.

Speaker 2: 3:31

Um, in 2004, when I was 13 years old, the cayman islands, um, were devastated by what remains one of the worst hurricanes in the country's history, hurricane ivan and after the storm I went to toronto and canada for the remainder of my secondary schooling as a boarding student and there I was living with girls from all over the world, so my closest friends were from Hong Kong and Nigeria and Egypt and Pakistan and Jamaica. So I had the privilege quite young to be engaging with a variety of cultures and experiences and perspectives and, like I've said, I think I had a latent interest in history and culture, but it wasn't until high school that I really viscerally felt myself sort of organizing that in my brain and recognizing that sort of pull and just being so enraptured by, you know, these classical history classes and thinking about these narratives and the character and the plot. And I think for me the key word is really story, because my interest in history comes from my interest in stories and storytelling and theatrical traditions and that's such a Caribbean thing I think. You know all of our cultures are really built on these foundations of oral tradition and any historian also knows that the facts of history are like a script, right, I mean words on a page are embodied and enlivened and spoken into life by and meaning by the actors who read them. You know the specificity of how they choose to navigate or verbalize a scene, how the directors of that script see the scene, you know the angles that they choose to look from, how they read between the lines and what they choose to focus on as the themes of their particular production.

Speaker 2: 5:15

So the facts of history, kind of seen and spoken from different perspectives and different voices, really change meaning and I'm really fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by personal and collective meaning and memory that people extract from history. So for me, it was really during my undergraduate studies in history at the University of Toronto that I started to zone in more on pre-Columbian history and early contact in North America as areas of my particular interest, america as areas of my particular interest. And then, after graduating and returning to Cayman in 2012, aging myself, I started working at the Cayman Islands National Museum and looking more specifically at the history and culture of the Cayman Islands, which, of course, I had always been living and surrounded by but was now approaching from, I suppose, more of a kind of historiographical perspective. So, yes, that's a little bit about my background and how I've come to do the work that I do now.

Speaker 1: 6:15

Thank you so much for sharing that. I was really moved to hear you say what you said about storytelling and even thinking of me founding the podcast. Oral storytelling was a big influence in that. Right, as you said, we have such a vibrant oral storytelling culture that spans across the region truly, and, of course, the diaspora, and one that I think we know of and I'm not sure to what extent we all, like, appreciate it as much as you know, you put it into words, words. So I really thank you for sharing that and, you know, joining with me to talk about storytelling and oral history through the work of art and performance as well.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Right, I definitely want us to jump into our conversation about Cayman Islands and its art history from definitely like a chronological perspective. First and foremost, I am always sort of, you know, bothered by where histories tend to start, right, which usually is, oh, christopher Columbus, sort of you know they start with that, that colonial Inquisition type period. But you know, in coming to understand Cayman Islands and the art that has evolved from the islands itself, you know what sort of the scene, what was the stage of the earliest forms of art that took place in the Cayman Islands and what do we know about it today and you know the influences and different things like that, yeah, so the Cayman Islands are a very interesting example in terms of the Caribbean, because we don't actually have any physical evidence of people having permanently settled here before the first sightings of the islands by the Spanish.

Speaker 2: 7:59

You know this rich creative tradition that you see coming out of the rest of the Caribbean, but definitely the Cayman Islands did have, you know, a large creative output when we think about the middle of the 19th century onwards, before this sort of formalized art, education and industry came into play. So the Cayman Islands for listeners who don't know much about the islands are an archipelago of three really tiny, relatively isolated islands. The three islands total just over 100 square miles. Grand Cayman is the largest, at 76 square miles, cayman Brack, the middle, at 14 square miles, and the Little Cayman at 10 miles. The Cayman Islands could be considered a decently harsh living environment. So there are these pervasive mangrove swamps, you know, there's a lot of these jagged limestone cliff rock. There's a lack of really viable fresh water sources, and the size and geography of the Cayman Islands kind of precluded them from being able to sustain the sort of long-term, substantial agricultural output that you would see in other places in the Caribbean, and so the people of the Cayman Islands really had to become incredibly environmentally aware and really learn to manipulate the resources that they had available to them, both terrestrially and in the surrounding ocean. Most Caymanians had to be incredibly varied in terms of their technical skill set. So one individual could plant, could construct a house from the ground up, could ship off to the Bay Islands as a turtle ranger, know when to cut the tops of that trees to use in rope, brew medicinal teas from endemic plants, make rugs out of scrap fabric. So everybody had these really varied skill sets and, even though people may not yet have had the luxury to make art for art's sake, these were people who were constantly engaged in the act of making, of creation.

Speaker 2: 9:59

You spoke with Dr Crawford in one of your earlier episodes of this podcast about how Caymanians really largely turned to the sea as a feasible source of income during this time, and part of that thriving maritime trade was a booming boat building industry, and so Caymanian craftsmen built all manner of seagoing vessels. I mean schooners to smaller sailboats, and I think the best known example, a really good example of Cayman maritime engineering, is the Cayman Catboat, and the Catboat's design is attributed to a Cayman bracker named Daniel Jervis. 1905 is the year that we recognize as being the first, at least the first exact example that we have. So you can kind of imagine like a almost a canoe-like sailboat with sort of wider curving sides, typically painted in this soft sort of blue. That's almost like, you know, the sky on a clear day, or sort of a robin's egg blue might be a good way to describe it. And these boats were built primarily using the popnut tree which grow, with these beautiful natural curves that sort of lend themselves really well to shaping the boat. And they have a cat rigged sail, so a single mast set forward on the boat, which is where we get the name cat boat from, although there are other colloquial stories about, you know, jervis finding kittens under the boat one morning. And the cat boat is often referred to as the first pickup truck.

Speaker 2: 11:26

So they were used to transport both people and cargo. So, for example, if you were living in the eastern districts and you wanted an easier way to come over to Georgetown than, you know, tromping through the bush to get there, you might catch a ride with someone on a cat boat and sail around the island to get there. Construction materials were brought in these boats bread, kind, you know, things like breadfruit and cassava from farming plots. Deceased loved ones were transported back to their families in cat boats and of course they were used to support the thriving turtle fishery which sustained the economy at the time. They were designed to mitigate capsizing, so you could kind of ply your fishing tray without too much threat from that as well, and as I understand it from my conversations with elder cat boat experts within the community, the construction of cat boats was a really intuitive process. So there was certainly technique. The length is four times the width, then the depth is three quarters the width. But these boats were built using a rule of thumb. So, for example, if you had money and you wanted to commission a capital and you went to a builder, that builder would have to go into the bush, look for the available material, find the right tree, the right piece of wood that he liked for the stern, whatever it was, and then you might get a length of boat that was a little bit longer, shorter than what you initially requested, just based on the creative liberty and the available resource that that builder was using. So the creative ingenuity, I think, in the design of these boats, though they were built for a utilitarian purpose. I think really points to an existing tradition of making within the community. I think really points to an existing tradition of making within the community Terrestrially.

Speaker 2: 13:05

A really iconic symbol of Cayman is the national tree, the endemic silver thatch palm, which is an incredibly sturdy and salt resistant type of thatch. It was used to craft practical objects that supported domestic and agricultural and maritime work and that included roofs for buildings. You can see examples of that in other parts of the world as well, not with the endemic silver thatch palm, which is only found in Grand Cayman, but with other forms of thatch. It was used for building, for making hats, for ground baskets, which are large round baskets with these sort of long straps that were used to carry heavy ground provisions so again, those really starchy fruits and vegetables or to back sand, which was basically shoveling sand from the beach into these baskets and then using it to create these lovely sand yards that are again really iconic to Cayman. Things like mats, fans, brooms and then, of course, rope, and that rope was widely used in the maritime trades and exported to Jamaica and Central America as well. So traditional thatch basketry even though it was started for survival and subsistence, it's a great example of fine craftsmanship.

Speaker 2: 14:18

This was an art that was largely mastered and practiced by women and children. The attention to detail that went into the production of these objects was truly awe-inspiring. I mean from the cutting of the tops. The tops are the unopened sort of top spiky leaves of that tree, and these were cut at specific times of the moon cycle to maximize longevity. You know the painstaking drying out of this material, the stripping of the fibers into individual strings that would then be twisted to make up a strand, and then the laying of those strands into fathoms of rope using a rope cart. And each district of Grand Cayman and Little Cayman, cayman Brac, had specific ways of twisting their strands and each artisan had their own individual style. So even you know, within this common utilitarian practice, there were moments of individualized creative expression.

Speaker 2: 15:09

So, as I alluded to before, there were also a number of craft forms for the domestic sphere. So things like rag rugging, which is, you know, these colorful straps of cloth that were attached to a lattice frame to make rugs quilting, crochet, painting, the sheets, where these intricate patterns were cut into burial shrouds that were then laid over deceased bodies and we were talking a little bit about the intangibility of culture, things like oral traditions, right, the pinking of the sheets is a tradition that you know. We see a lot of loss with that because many of those examples of the shrouds are now buried and it wasn't a tradition that you know has been able to be carried on the way that maybe we would have liked it to right. So there was constant making within this community, even if there wasn't a formalized sort of you know art industry per se. In 1891, there was actually a display of Caymanian traditional craft that was included in the Jamaica exhibition.

Speaker 1: 16:09

So really speaking to the quality of that early period of craft work, I'm really grateful for you sort of, you know, cementing us in that historical framework for a couple reasons. One, of course, you brought forth Dr Crawford's episode where she shared about the, you know, turtle seafarers from Cayman Islands and really, you know, helped us to ground our understandings of their initiatives, not just from a perspective of, oh you know, there were these men who you know were turtle hunters, right, but they helped to shape like international policies and consumerisms on like a massive scale, right, and additionally, with that point, also helping us to understand that there is variety in what we consider art. Right. We are obviously in this what's the best way to put it? We're in a world today where, you know, things like sculptures and, you know, paintings are what immediately come to mind when we think of art, but really helping us to understand that you know paintings are what immediately come to mind when we think of art, but really helping us to understand that, you know, it's especially important for us to consider that things like the crafts, things like the spooners and cat boats, right, are definitely elements of our art, especially when you take into consideration the different aspects of imperialism and colonialism and how they have shaped our creations and ability to create, right.

Speaker 1: 17:37

And so you know, you brought us definitely up to you know very much more so, closer to the 20th century, in terms of Cayman Islands, and I think you know, in my sense, being able to understand the shift.

Speaker 1: 17:51

You know, in my sense, being able to understand the shift from you know what you were previously talking about in terms of, you know, cayman's art being a lot more craft oriented and engineering oriented, based off what was happening at the time, to really understanding that these turtle men, as Dr Crawford called them, you know help to then, you know, catapult Cayman Islands in a different avenue through their ability to bring wealth to the islands, right. And so now we get to see the beginnings of, you know what this formal is known as the Southwell years, right, are really integral to this period. And so how did you know, this time in the 20th century, really lay the groundwork, or you know, the early pioneers of this moment for the visual art community, and you know what was this period like, how did they go about establishing this community and what were the sort of criticisms or public response?

Speaker 2: 18:56

Yeah, so, as you mentioned, the Southwell years and in the years following that in the mid 20th century, cayman was changing a lot. So there was a lot of this rapid affluence, as you mentioned, rapid social and economic development with a lot of substantial foreign investment, land development, land sale, this increasing move towards banking and financial services, and with that came increased immigration from the UK and Canada, the US and Jamaica. So you had people coming into Cayman from all over the world now and settling permanently and this also brought people who were artists. So while we had this existing, you know, vibrant craft tradition and vibrant building tradition, you had people who were more formally I guess, quote unquote formally trained as visual artists that were coming into the country and starting to work here and starting to share that love for the visual arts. So one of those people was Ed Oliver and his wife, barbara Oliver. They arrived in Cayman in the late 60s and Ed Oliver was a technically immaculate figurative artist. He was someone who had been working in the American industrial design industry and in advertising and he started teaching in 1969 in Cayman. He was working as a manager on one of the local newspapers and then started holding art classes in 1969. And he continued doing that with his wife Barbara, for over 30 years and in the 60s and 70s the Oliver's Art Venture Store and the art talent competition that they started were really kind of the sum total of art opportunities for people in Cayman. So there still weren't really a lot of opportunities for someone who was interested in pursuing a professional art career, or even interested in displaying something that they were working on, to do that in Cayman at that point.

Speaker 2: 20:51

So I guess, just for regional context in terms of this history, in the late 60s you had a lot of these independence movements that were happening within the Caribbean. So for example, you have Jamaican independence, trinidadian independence, barbadian independence and in 1973, you have CARICOM form, which is sort of providing a forum for the Caribbean to have more significant global voice, and you also have, I think, from the artist's perspective, the influence of these American and British modernists. So you have these sort of national movements and then you also have these modernist voices that are really interested in these forms of expressionism. Right Now in Cayman the first sort of truly significant solo exhibition by a Caymanian artist was in 1974 at the Royal Palms Hotel and that was Bendel Hydes, who has become one of the, if not the largest name associated with contemporary Caymanian art, and I'll talk a little bit more about him as we go on.

Speaker 2: 21:58

In 1978, bendel Hydes, alongside Jeff Creswell, frank McField and Anita Ebanks, started the In Company, which would later become the National Theatre Company and then the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. At the same time, in the mid-70s, you had a group of artists who had, you know, started painting informally together. They mounted an exhibition at the Holiday Inn Hotel in 1976 and then they formalized into a group called the Visual Arts Society, and the Visual Arts Society actually still operates today. They were the island's first sort of official arts organization, and that included artists such as Margaret Barwick, who is, I think, most well known for her watercolor landscape paintings, and Charles Long, who was known as sort of the chronicler of our times, and he has this iconic, very flat style of painting which depicts these sort of everyday scenes from around the island in very colorful way. So VAS was holding these annual art fairs. The education opportunities through that organization were increasing.

Speaker 2: 23:01

But in 1981 Margaret Barwick sort of led a group of artists to Cara Festa, cara Festa 4 in Barbados and this is the Caribbean Festival of the Arts and that was really an opportunity, a large opportunity for Caymanian artists to showcase regionally, to make more regional connections and also to start exploring different modes and mediums of expression. At the time most Caymanian art was centered in these sort of watercolor and oil realism paintings. So there wasn't a lot of exploration in terms of style at the time. So in the 80s and 90s you start to see this change. So more opportunities start coming and we kind of get more organizations growing that are helping to push forward the types of art that individuals are making in Cayman. So, for example, in 1982, you have the National Children's Festival of the Arts start, which helps to encourage young people to find different forms of expression, and that wasn't just visual arts, that was also speech, it was drama, it was music.

Speaker 2: 24:12

In 1984, you have, as I mentioned before, the founding of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation In 1996, you have a group come together called the Native Sons, and the Native Sons were really stylistically different in terms of their approach to art but they were all unified by this idea of painting from a Caymanian perspective. So many of the visual arts society artists, for example, you know, painted these beautiful pastoral scenes of traditional Caymanian cottages, for example. But the Native sons really wanted to paint. You know, they said from within that cottage. So what was the actual cultural experience like for people who were Caymanian? What was that experience like? So that was really their goal. And then, in 1997, you have the founding of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. So these organizations were starting to be built. That created a foundation and a framework for a larger industry to start blooming.

Speaker 1: 25:15

Thank you for, you know, painting that timeline for us, I think, especially, it puts a lot of things together having to understand that. You know, as you mentioned, right, a lot of the islands are going through their political you know, obviously shifts in their political environments at the time, hoping to gain independence or eventually gaining independence, and that you know for a very. There was a episode we did a while back now, a very brief one on the Cayman Islands and how the Cayman Islands was part of the colony of Jamaica at the time, right. And so I think, you know, you giving us that background of all of the different factors that came into not only the defining moment of Cayman Islands coming to be, and, you know, wanting to obviously adopt its own political and national and sort of, you know, reflective of who the people are there, but also still understanding that, based off their own political identity, they were also maintaining, you know, connections to British colonialism, right.

Speaker 1: 26:22

One thing that I find really special about the end of your conversation there was your talk about the native sons, right, and how there's always that sort of like weird hierarchy thing when it comes to art, right, there are the people who are the, you know, mozarts and those people right, but there are also, of course, a sect of people who are trying to really um, narrate and communicate and express change in a way that, more so, is accessible and touches the masses. And so you know how do you feel, like artists, like the native sons, um, and you know any others who you want to name, really helped to, you know, change, the what, what the understanding of of that movement was and or had been up to that time, just because you know they were varying from the sort of standard painting practices of the time right and moving towards a place where they were becoming more socially conscious.

Speaker 2: 27:40

And I think you know the pervasive style of realism painting. Part of it, I think, was, you know, founded in a genuine desire to paint the beauty of the landscape, right To represent, you know, this gorgeous place that surrounds us. Part of it was also commercial as well, so you know, the things that were selling at that time were commercial images of the beautiful landscape. So there's both elements of that. I think that was more centered in a perspective of maybe subject is the right word for it or object, whereas when the Native Sons came about, they were more interested in broader experience, so they were experimenting a little bit more in terms of the type of mediums that they were using. One example would be Nasaria Suku-Chillette. She has done a lot of painting work as well, but she's also a mixed media artist. So she does a lot of painting work as well, but she's also a mixed media artist, so she does a lot of collage work, where she plays with incorporating, you know, even traditional craft materials into paintings. So you might have something that is an oil or acrylic based painting with crochet embedded into that. You might have, you know, a bed that is made out of plantain trash what they call plantain trash in Cayman, which is the dried leaves of the plantain tree. You might also have a type of quilt made out of plantain trash that is then embroidered into. So she's playing with.

Speaker 2: 29:03

You know, contemporary versions of these traditional techniques and materials. Of these traditional techniques and materials, you have people like Randy Shillette who is meshing global traditions. So he was looking at this history of Christian spirituality that exists in Cayman but then meshing that with his Rastafarian beliefs as well. So he has an artwork that is actually painted on the roof of a traditional cottage or stylized to look like the roof of a traditional cottage, that plays off of the painting the Creation of Adam that's on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. But instead of these sort of European figures he's done African figures instead and he's used these West African masks and sort of symbology of those cultures and religions and sort of meshing these two traditions together to explore Cayman's African traditions, which I think was something that the Native Sons really brought to the forefront more than artists had Before, that they were really interested in exploring all of the different parts of Cayman's identity that had maybe been hidden in previous years.

Speaker 1: 30:16

It's really cool to hear and, I think, one that I'm really interested in and just coming to understand the different ways and different things we uphold when it comes to art. You know, like thinking about quilts, right, that, I think, was a beautiful, beautiful iteration of you know, a different way to for us to understand our art and also a way for us to bring our past histories into the present and future as well. I definitely do want us to spend a bit of time in our episode today talking about your work at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, just because I've had a few museum people on the show by this point. But I really think you know your work as the education manager is remarkable in being able to share this history in a way that's really accessible to everybody, whether that's, you know, locals or visitors, etc. And so how do you feel like your work helps us to expand the awareness of this history across the Cayman Islands?

Speaker 2: 31:17

Yeah. So I guess my work is really about creating opportunities for everyone to be able to have intimate personal experiences with work of many different types of mediums and styles. I think you know, sometimes museums get a bit of a bad rap for being these very exclusive places that only, you know, the one percent are allowed to go into and they feel a little bit. You know static and white wall and you know they can be very intimidating spaces to go into that not everybody feels are for them boundaries to the access of art and the conversations around art and the, you know expressive opportunities that art can offer for people and the wellness opportunities that art can offer for people. So you know, our education department at the National Gallery is really about inclusion and accessibility and ensuring that the gallery space is a space where anybody in the community can walk in and feel that there is a place for them to see themselves in the work, engage with the work, ask questions, start dialogues and conversations, learn new things, contribute new things, because of course we also don't want to be so deep in our own intellectualism that we forget that the real knowledge exists in the community. I think you know sometimes we plan these programs and then sometimes they happen very organically, which is wonderful, because then it is coming truly from the needs and interests of the community around us.

Speaker 2: 33:07

I think a good example of that recently has been I mentioned the artist Nasaria Sikushelet. She had a solo show at the National Gallery in 2021. And she is a multidisciplinary artist. So in addition to her visual art practice, she's also an educator and she's also a poet, and we really wanted to incorporate the poetry element into the program of events that went alongside the show, and so we hosted this open mic poetry night. And I want to credit Parcel 110, who is another creative space that formerly existed in Cayman, who were also doing open mic nights, and I had been to a few of them and was aware of them, and so we created this open mic night. And I had been to a few of them and was aware of them, and so we created this open mic night specifically for that exhibition. But it went so well.

Speaker 2: 33:55

I mean, it was so well received and people really, really loved it and felt like there was this space and a platform for them to express ideas about the loss of traditional architecture, about the loss of cultural traditions, about, you know, these anxieties and fears that people were having that they didn't feel they had the platform necessarily to verbalize all of the time. Now, that didn't necessarily have to do with, you know, a specific painting, but when you're in a space of creation and expression, but when you're in a space of creation and expression, you know you're in a safe place where you feel that you are able to express those things, you have that platform to release any of that anxiety that is sort of sitting on your, on your chest, I think. So that was so well received that it started to become a regular occurrence. And you know, now we do these open mics, I think once an exhibition, and so it's decently infrequent I mean it's every three to four months. And so you know, we have a core crew of people that come every single time. Every time we have new faces. We have, you know, even visitors to the island that come to these events and that's a great opportunity for them to explore Kamaian culture and history and heritage through attending those events as well. So that's been a really magical, I think, example of one of our programs.

Speaker 2: 35:20

We also have a flagship program called Walker's Art Club, which is an inclusive afterschool program very kindly sponsored by walkers for many, many years now.

Speaker 2: 35:30

And um, that program is about nine different class units, from age five through to 17, where students get to learn technical art skills but also just make friends and be in a great creative place and learn all these different mediums.

Speaker 2: 35:43

Learn about Caymanian artists, you know, grow up in a way in Cayman where they can believe that you know the pursuit of a professional career in Cayman, where they can believe that you know the pursuit of a professional career in the creative industries is possible for them. It's a free program, which is very lucky, you know, again, breaking those barriers of accessibility. We hope it's open to students of all abilities. So there are children who are neurodivergent, who are in that space and everybody's interacting with each other, which I think is really important in terms of ensuring that our full community is represented in any of the programming that we do. So that's kind of a snapshot, I guess, of two of the programs that we do, but you know the underlying current, again, is about accessibility and inclusion, even if it's just hosting a yoga class on the grounds of the gallery, which you know people may think has nothing to do with art, but is about facilitating community space.

Speaker 1: 36:39

Yeah, definitely, and I think that's what art is about, right, as you're you were alluding to. It's not just about elaborate paintings or sculptures, all the time at least right, but it's community, it's expression and communing with one another right. It's not an isolationist activity, necessarily, or it doesn't have to be.

Speaker 2: 37:02

Yeah, absolutely. I also think that you know art has the ability to teach about everything, right, right, so we have teachers that come in and want to do school tours and, in addition to a general history or culture tour, I mean you can teach math through the arts, right? Curators have to do a lot of math in their practice. You know you have to measure.

Speaker 2: 37:24

This wall is 14 feet long and I need to fit, you know, this many paintings on the wall. It needs to be this much space between the paintings, and so you're doing math as you're doing these curatorial practices, right, so we can teach that through visits to the gallery. We can teach, you know, environmental science through artworks that explore coral bleaching or explore mangrove ecosystems. So there's so many different conversations that you can have through the visual arts. Of course, we talked a little bit about Cayman's, even the turtle fishing history, even political history. You can teach through the arts. Walk through the doors and have an experience with any piece of artwork in that room, whether it's an abstract painting, whether it's a figurative painting, whether it's, you know, an installation work that uses materials that they use in their everyday life.

Speaker 1: 38:26

I think that we have met our goal, so beautiful, and I think something again that I think just personally resonates with my own mission and vision. So I'm glad our listeners get to you know, learn a bit more about the National Gallery's mission and vision and how it's also connecting with the community. Having you on the show. You've definitely done a brilliant job of sharing so many different works with us, and so I've been taking notes feverishly. We'll add them to our Strictly Facts syllabus. But you know I have to ask, since you're here, what is one of your favorite examples of, you know, cayman Islands art? Maybe even even I know I usually ask this in a roundabout way, but if you have maybe a favorite artist work that you think best exemplifies the island and is really reflective of the rich traditions we've discussed today, I'm gonna cheat a little bit because I'm gonna give you a couple, totally fine.

Speaker 2: 39:26

It's so difficult to answer that question, um, with just one or two examples. So, um, I think uh, in no specific order I think the work of leonard dilbert, who is a caymanian poet I really admire and respect. I think, um, his work really explores some of those anxieties in terms of the shifting tides of Cayman, the shifting social and economic development, critiques on mindset, sometimes critiques on perspectives of seeing Cayman, and he's just also a really fabulous writer and his imagery is incredible. So I would definitely recommend his work. A great contemporary artist of a young Caymanian who is really making waves in the fashion industry right now is Jawara Alyen. If you are in the fashion world or in the pop cultural world, you'll probably have heard his name. He's been dressing Rihanna recently and many other sort of big name celebrities. But he's a Jamaican Caymanian designer who is really interested in the sort of underground of Cayman. So moving beyond the sort of tourist gaze of these white sand beaches and looking at, you know, the reality of life sort of within this, the urban environment of Cayman, and then integrating that into garments he's really inspired by, you know, even things like pirate iconography, um, but also you know the sort of graffiti culture as well, and he's using draping and this idea of like circularity in fashion, so reusing materials to create the garments that that he's he's creating. So definitely Duara Alyan's work I would suggest looking into. Um.

Speaker 2: 41:19

I also really love Simon Tatum, who's another young Caymanian artist. Um, there is an artwork of his in the national collection where you see this, this young man, and he's sort of he's standing in a in low water and he's sort of bent over looking into a water glass which is essentially like a, a box, a wooden box, and then in the bottom there is sort of a glass where you can look into the ocean and behind him is a turtle crawl and a turtle crawl is a sort of water pen where turtles were kept, sort of keep them alive and fresh, before they were taken off to be slaughtered or sold or whatever it was. But that piece is actually a self portrait where this is a young Caymanian artist who hasn't had the physical, visceral experience that his forefathers or his ancestors may have had, and so he's almost painted himself into this experience of what it would be like to be a Caymanian seafarer at that time. So I really appreciate that sort of intersection of generations that's happening within that artwork.

Speaker 2: 42:27

Definitely the work of Gladwyn K Bush, better known as Miss Lassie, who is a Caymanian intuitive artist. The term intuitive artist has been contested a little bit, but she is a self-taught artist who painted based on these dreams and visions that she had. She painted, you know, floor to ceiling, on her walls, on her doors and windows, on glass, basically on any surface that she could really get her hands on, and it was very much, I think, a compulsion for her to express herself in this way, and she actually started when she was 62. So I think she's a great example of there's never a right time or a wrong time to start an art practice. And I also recommend Swanky Kitchen Band, who is a contemporary example of traditional Caymanian music kitchen music, so really based in drum and fiddle and guitar. So I would definitely check out Swanky Kitchen Band. Their music is, I believe, on Spotify and YouTube and all of the usual places where you can find your music. So yeah, swanky Kitchen Band, great example of um, a modern take on traditional music wonderful.

Speaker 1: 43:35

I again I've taken my notes, so I'll definitely add them to our strictly fact syllabus for our listeners wanting to check out more about the artists, their works and music. Um, and you know, just get a little bit of a different perspective of what you may have understood to be cayman Islands and the island's art history. I also want to uphold in many ways, as you've noted, today in our conversation there are different of your must visit places to see in terms of, you know, for somebody to get a really great understanding of what Cayman Islands art looks like from a variety of perspectives.

Speaker 2: 44:20

So I think the Cayman Islands National Museum for sure. They have a large collection of the visual arts. They actually were the first formal institution in Cayman to start collecting art, so I would certainly visit them. Their museum is also inside a historic building I believe it's the oldest standing original building in Georgetown so I would certainly go and check them out. I would also recommend doing Cayman Art Week, which typically happens during the summer every year. If you live in Cayman or if you happen to be in Cay happens during the summer every year. If you live in Cayman or if you happen to be in Cayman during the summer, do check the dates on that.

Speaker 2: 44:56

That's a really great commercial opportunity for Caymanian artists and Cayman-based artists to sell their work, and that's every single medium that you can possibly imagine. So there are media projects. There is, you know, kind of traditional painting, there's sculpture work, there's performance based work, so that's a really good one in terms of getting a breadth of different styles in. At the same time, I would absolutely recommend trying to spend time with traditional craft artisans. I know that that's probably easier said than done because I think sometimes we'll have a hard time finding them, but certainly contact the Cayman National Cultural Foundation or the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands we can recommend names of people to get in touch with, but I think that traditional craft is such a foundation of Cayman's creative practice. It would be a shame to not experience that if you were looking into the arts of the Cayman Islands. So those, I think, would be the three primary places that I would suggest would suggest, beautiful.

Speaker 1: 46:08

I've never been, so I would love to visit especially. You know the many connections between Cayman Islands and Jamaica as well. So, yeah, I hope not only will I be adding these to my list of to-do things and to go and to visit places, but I hope our listeners do as well. And so with that, maya, I really thank you for you know showing and sharing so much of your brilliance and expertise and wisdom, and even personal experience as well, with us on the show today To our listeners.

Speaker 1: 46:40

This was, you know, a roundabout way of me jumping into our discussion of Caribbean art in various ways that I've planned for the next year, so I hope you enjoyed it. If there are any specific aspects of you know art and artist work that you'd like me to pivot into talking more about in the upcoming year, do let me know. I'm always available via DM. You know Instagram, all the things, so feel free to find me somewhere online and let me know your thoughts. But again, maya, thank you so much for joining us. I will link everything in our show notes and as well on our website. Until next time, little more. Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit strictlyfactspodcastcom for more information from each episode. Follow us at Strictly Facts Pod on Instagram and Facebook and at Strictly Facts PD on Twitter.