The Fact of Blackness – #CCF

April 17, 2014May 20, 2015Leave a comment

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (1952). Photograph by Dondré Trotman.

“Who am I?/ I am a black man, of that I’m sure. / I am a black man…I’m sure. After all, the colour of my skin proves that fact. / So I am a black man, but I’m not sure of much more” states Frantz Fanon, a leading black intellectual of the 20th century. What I liked about Fanon’s essay “The Fact of Blackness” was his autobiographical address of the ‘black identity issue’- a topic that is still a major refrain of popular culture.

The above excerpt is from Ronald Williams’ review of Fanon’s essay ‘The Fact of Blackness’, which is the first piece to be featured on our newly launched Fresh Milk Books Tumblr, the online space inviting interaction with our collection in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room.

For new Critical. Creative. Fresh reviews every week, look out for our #CCF Tuesdays and see the good reads we have available at Fresh Milk!

FRESH Volunteers & the launch of Fresh Milk Books

April 16, 2014May 20, 20151 Comment

Fresh Milk is happy to announce that we have recently taken on three volunteers – Versia Harris, Ronald Williams, and Amanda Domalene Haynes – as part of a programme we are developing to activate and cultivate interest in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room (CLRR), while giving young creatives the opportunity to gain work experience with a relevant organization, promoting critical thinking and artistic production.

One of the major projects our volunteers will be initiating is our new online space for the interactive exploration of the CLRR, Fresh Milk Books. This Tumblr site will exemplify our motto – Critical. Creative. Fresh. – and act as a hub of activity to raise awareness of our enthralling, diverse and ever expanding collection, becoming a space to have fun with the knowledge and pleasure that reading – whether literary, visual, or otherwise – can ignite.

Photograph by Dondré Trotman.

In addition to re-blogging engaging content, each Tuesday one of our contributors will create a short response to a good read from the CLRR. These responses can be written, visual, audio, video – the only requirement for #CCF Tuesdays is that the text and its accompanying submission be Critical. Creative. Fresh.

The experimental approach to Fresh Milk Books reflects on another facet of the FRESH Volunteer programme; stimulating creative production. As well as the pieces generated around the material in the CLRR, we also want to give the volunteering artists and writers involved time and workspace to focus on their own arts practices in a supportive environment with their peers. We encourage Versia, Ronald and Amanda to use part of their time on the platform to transfer knowledge and skills to one another, bounce ideas, collaborate, and view this as an informal but focused chance to incorporate meaningful exchanges and working sessions alongside their volunteering duties.

About our Volunteers:

Photograph by Omar Kuwas.

Versia Harris

Versia Harris is a Barbadian artist living and working in Weston, St. James. She graduated from the Barbados Community College with a BFA in the Studio Art programme in 2012, with an award from The Leslie’s Legacy Foundation. She participated in her first local residency with Projects and Space in 2011. Within the past year she has completed four residencies, beginning with a local residency at Fresh Milk, followed by her first international residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and two regional residencies at the Instituto Buena Bista, Curacao and Alice Yard, Trinidad in late 2013. In her work, Versia tackles perceptions of fantasy in contrast to the reality of her original character. She uses Adobe Photoshop to manipulate her pen drawings to create the animations.

Ronald Williams

Born in Bridgetown, Barbados in 1990, multimedia artist Ronald Williams developed an interest in art from a very young age. His art education in the Barbados Community College’s Fine Arts program forced him to view art as a powerful cog in society. Currently, Williams’ work focuses on race and sociology, investigating how sports and the black athlete fit into popular culture. Ronald manipulates popular imagery to compose computer generated images, using digital collage to speak about a multiplicity of issues, i.e. society’s perceptions, stereotypes, fantasies and various nuances about the black athlete.

Amanda Domalene Haynes

Amanda Domalene is a creative writer, editor and emerging e-book publisher. She graduated from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in 2013 with a BA in Literatures in English (First Class Hons.). Amanda has had diverse experience with publishing companies, adopting the capacities of content co-ordinator, public relations & sales executive as well as writing and editing. Her postgraduate research interests include media literacy and popular culture, especially in relation to the socioeconomic development of the Caribbean region.

FRESH MILK XIII Video

November 6, 2013June 9, 2015Leave a comment

Take a look at our video from FRESH MILK XIII, held on October 24th 2013 at Fresh Milk.

The event featured of a screening of our resident artist Damali Abrams’ documentary Fresh Performance: Contemporary Performance Art in NYC & The Caribbean; the launching of our new public gallery space the FRESH MILK ARTBOARD & our Virtual Map of Caribbean Art Spaces; screening a selection from Project 35: Volume 2, a traveling exhibition produced by Independent Curators International, New York; and showcasing the new additions to the Colleen Lewis Reading Room.

Thanks to Sammy Davis for shooting and editing this video.

FRESH MILK XIII

October 15, 2013July 18, 2019Leave a comment

FRESH MILK is pleased to invite you to our upcoming public event FRESH MILK XIII, which will be held on Thursday, October 24^th 2013 from 6:30 – 8:00 pm at the Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., St. George, Barbados. See our About page for directions.

The event will feature a screening of the full length documentary Fresh Performance: Contemporary Performance Art in NYC & the Caribbean, created by New York-based, Guyanese performance/video artist Damali Abrams, who is currently on a joint residency with Fresh Milk and Groundation Grenada.

Damali has been working with Fresh Milk since April this year on the Fresh Performance Project, which has seen her interviewing one Caribbean-based and one New York-based performance artist each month and editing the footage into a six-chapter series of short videos. Given that performance art in the Caribbean is practiced by a small number of artists, this project has opened up a critical dialogue contributing to expanding the creative arena, and offering support to performance artists who often work in isolation. The project aims to build cultural bridges between the U.S. and the Caribbean and generate understanding and community through the arts. Damali has been using her time in the Caribbean to produce a full length documentary on this subject, as well as undertaking public outreach components in both Barbados and Grenada. Her progress will be screened at FRESH MILK XIII, and a Q&A session to further the conversation will be facilitated.

Also being shown at the event will be a selection from Project 35 Volume 2, a traveling exhibition produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition is made possible, in part, by grants from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation; the ICI Board of Trustees; and donors to ICI’s Access Fund. Among the curators who took part in this project is Trinidadian artist and writer Christopher Cozier.

Fresh Milk will also use this event as a platform to launch two very exciting projects – our new public gallery space the FRESH MILK ARTBOARD and the Fresh Milk Virtual Map of Caribbean Art Spaces. The Artboard, which resides in a field of cows bordering a public road on the way to Fresh Milk, will be used to feature the work of contemporary artists, increasing visibility and awareness of their practice to a wide audience. Kick-starting our new public gallery space will be Barbadian artist Evan Avery, whose work was taken to Brazil as one part of the Visual Arts component of the recently held Barbados trade mission to Sao Paulo. The graphic he designed is currently displayed at the informal art space Casa Tomada in their ‘A Casa Recebe’ programme, a street facing window showcasing work from artists locally and internationally, until March 2014. Having his work running concurrently in both spaces for a period of time deepens the relationship we are building with Casa Tomada and the arts community in Sao Paulo, and we look forward to hosting pieces from Brazilian artists on our Artboard as a part of this cultural exchange.

The Fresh Milk Virtual Map is a freely accessible, interactive online cultural map of the Caribbean, which clearly delineates the existing spaces for the arts in the region, from the nineteenth century up to the present time.

This map addresses the lack of available information about Caribbean arts at the formal, informal and educational levels. The region is mapped to show arts entities, listed with links to the websites of spaces, and maintained to keep information current. This map is not only a pivotal information hub and educational tool, but a place to form new bonds and to make connections among practitioners in the Caribbean and worldwide. We would eventually like to expand the map to include our partner institutions throughout the diaspora as well. We wish to acknowledge the amazing tour de force we have in Kriston Chen who has managed and designed the virtual map project.

Finally, we are also proud to showcase some of the beautiful new publications we have purchased for the Colleen Lewis Reading Room. Our collection has continued to grow through the generosity and support of donors, funders and organizations, and as always we invite people to email us at freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com to schedule appointments to make use of this valuable resource.

Special thanks to the US Embassy in Barbados for supporting Damali’s residency and contributing to the expansion of the Reading Room; to the Maria Holder Memorial Trust for supporting the Virtual Map as well as expanding the library collection; Groundation Grenada for taking part in this collaborative residency with us; the ICI for sharing Project 35; and to Musson Realty for donating their billboard for Fresh Milk to use as an exhibition space. We are extremely grateful for all of the relationships we have formed, which assist us in carrying out our mission.