In Miami, A World of Caribbean Art

Above: the opening procession by Trinidadian performance artist Akuzuru (all photos by CJ)

By Alexander Britell

MIAMI — Caribbean art is on display in Miami, but it’s not what you may think.

On Thursday, the Perez Art Museum Miami debuted its first major Caribbean exhibition, the Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, a look at regional art from the last two centuries.

With more than 500 pieces of art, Crossroads of the World travels across a range of countries, time periods and genres, seeming to challenge traditional notions of what makes art Caribbean and yet, remaining unquestionably Caribbean.

The exhibition is a rather bold attempt to demonstrate the almost overwhelming depth and breadth of the region’s art — if, at times, it can be somewhat difficult to digest.

On balance, though, finding this much regional art in one place is something to be treasured — and one hopes that the museum will take advantage of Miami’s place as one of the major poles of Caribbean culture in the hemisphere.

Above: Akuzuru’s procession through PAMM

Crossroads of the World opened on Thursday evening with beautiful, mysterious procession led by the Trinidadian-born artist Azukuru, who led a phalanx of white-clad dancers bearing bamboo rods through the open-air plaza of the museum.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World first debuted as a joint exhibition in 2012 between New York’s El Museo Del Barrio museum, the Queens Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Set on the museum’s second floor, the rather eclectic collection featured everything from a painting by Camille Pissarro in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands to provocative works by Haitian-born artist Eduardo Duval-Carrie, who recently debuted a solo exhibit at the museum earlier this year.