Annalee Davis

Annalee Davis was born in 1963 in St. Michael, Barbados. Annalee spent her childhood growing up on a series of sugar cane plantations- her first home was at the state owned plantation, Graeme Hall in Christ Church, the family then moved to Sandford Plantation in St. Philip and finally to Cliff Plantation in St. John where they lived for 24 years. Her father who was a planter and her mother raised the large family of five children, played the piano and helped with the bookkeeping on the plantation. After attending primary and secondary school in Barbados, Davis earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland (1982-1986) with a year abroad at the Studio Art Center International (SACI) in Florence, Italy (1984-1985) and went on to the Mason Gross School for the Arts, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick campus (1987-1989) where she earned her MFA. Her art education was traditional and included a focus on drawing, painting, printmaking and art history at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level, she was part of a small group of approximately sixty students in a two year programme where she was exposed to highly regarded artists who were professors at Rutgers including Leon Golub, Joan Semmel, Emma Amos, Mel Edwards, Steve Cagan and Martha Rossler. Proximity to NYC provided regular access to a wide cross section of exhibitions in the city and an excellent visiting artist programme which included the likes of Adrian Piper, Faith Ringgold and Hans Haacke offered a dynamic and challenging educational environment. On graduating from Rutgers, she returned to Barbados to take up a teaching post at The St. Michael Secondary School (1987-1989).

Her more recent work has moved from painting and printmaking into installation and video art, and concerns itself with "post-plantation economies" and the transformation of Barbados from forests to sugarcane farms to a tourist destination. Much of her work uses mixed media installation to explore the Caribbean experience of identity as one that is mitigated by constant migration.[1] Some of her works include To Hang and to Hold (1998 acrylic painting on canvas with galvanized wire) and And Knitting Them Together (1998 painting using acrylics, cotton, and paper on canvas).[2] She has also made work that explores the postcolonial relationship to food production in her native Barbados, in a 2016 performance entitled (bush) Tea Services.' In 2011, Annalee founded Fresh Milk, an arts platform and micro-residency programme. In 2012 she co-founded Caribbean Linked, an annual residency in Aruba, cohering emerging artists, writers and curators from the Caribbean and Latin America. In 2015, she co-founded Tilting Axis, an independent visual arts platform bridging the Caribbean through annual encounters. From 2016-2018, she was Caribbean Arts Manager with the British Council, developing programming in Cuba, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and in 2020 she co-founded Sour Grass, a curatorial agency. '[3]

In 1991, Annalee left her post at The St. Michael Secondary School to take up a short-term consulting job at the Edna Manley School for the Visual Arts to design a 4-year Printmaking degree programme for the tertiary level institution and to teach a Printmaking workshop to Jamaican artists. She then began traveling around the Caribbean meeting fellow artists, becoming part of a larger regional arts community by building relations with her peers in the Anglophone, Hispanophone and Dutch Antilles. In 1992, she was part of a small group of artists agitating for change in the Barbadian arts landscape. Together, they co-founded Representing Artists, an arts collective and union for local artists. She became editor of its quarterly Caribbean arts newsletter RA (Representing Artists) which produced six issues from 1992-1994. Produced by the Barbados Government Printers, the newsletter was spearheaded by this group of Barbados-based artists who saw the need to create a forum for critical writing around contemporary arts in the region.

Annalee began teaching part-time in the Bachelor of Fine Arts, Visual Arts programme at the Barbados Community College from the mid nineties intermittently until 2018. 

Aerial view of Walkers Dairy, St. George, Barbados. Photo credit: Justin Went.

Davis’ studio is currently located on a working dairy farm in Barbados which operated historically as a 17th century sugarcane plantation, offering a critical context for her practice which explores the residue of the plantation. She works at the intersection of biography and history, focussing on post-plantation economies by engaging with a particular landscape on Barbados which has been a source of information and inspiration for her practice since relocating to this site in 2001 after living in Trinidad and Tobago in the late nineties.

The following are some examples of Davis’ art:

Parasite Series (2018-2019)

Parasite Series at joint exhibition of Kunsthalle Wien and Wiener Festwochen

This suite of drawings of parasites is inspired both by Antonio Benitez-Rojo’s The Repeating Island (1992) and Evelyn O’Callaghan’s introductory text to the fictional 19th century text, With Silent Tread (2002). Benitez-Rojo writes of the “parasitical presence of the island’s sugar-producing history” and “its laborious intestinal history” while O’Callaghan articulates ways in which “white creoles were viewed with suspicion” due to “the fear of miscegenation... addressed indirectly by the use of the trope, disease.” The full series was part of the exhibition And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers? This 2021 joint exhibition of Kunsthalle Wien and Wiener Festwochen, was curated by Peruvian-based independent curator Miguel A. López with the support of Curatorial Assistant, Laura Amann, combining the works by more than 35 artists from around the world, located everywhere from the Amazon region to Australia, from Guatemala to India.

Wild Plant Series

Installation view of Wild Plant Series as part of a solo exhibition, This Ground Beneath My Feet - A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands, The Idea Lab, The Warfield Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2016-2017

This 2016 series of drawings functions as graphic interventions into 1970s ledger pages, the substrate designed to log economic activity on the plantation. Collecting, pressing and drawing these wild plants, complicates the single economic story written in these plantation ledger pages, acknowledging their medicinal properties and earlier use as an apothecary by those who were enslaved and laboured on the plantation.

(Bush) Tea Services (2016)

Photo by Tim Bowditch.

The work was commissioned by the London-based curatorial team called Cooking Sections for the Empire Remains Shop pop up exhibition project. Davis completed the work in residence at Delfina Foundation in August 2016 which kicked off the fourth month project as a discursive installation and formed the basis of a colloquy.  The work was included in the publication edited by Cooking Sections in a dialogical essay titled, Tilling Rab Lands in a Post Plantation Economy - A Conversation on Caribbean Soil with Annalee Davis, pp. 143-157, The Empire Remains Shop // Columbia Books On Architecture and The City, Columbia University Press, Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernandez Pascual. April 2018. London-based Dr. Janice Cheddie reviewed the installation for ARC Magazine's online platform. It was later included in a HuffPost review by NY-based, Jamaican writer, Jacqueline Bishop called Annalee Davis Uses Art to Unearth and Interrogate.

Later in 2016-2017, the work was included in Davis’ solo exhibition called This Ground Beneath My Feet - A Chorus Of Bush In Rab Lands which included four commissioned texts, some of which speak to the work. The exhibition was hosted by The Idea Lab, Warfield Center Galleries, University of Texas, Austin which produced a print and online publication. While in Austin, Texas, Davis was invited to speak about the work by Rebecca McInroy on the podcast called The Secret Ingredient with her along with Tom Philpot and Raj Patel, Austin, Texas, September 2016;

In 2018, The Barbados Museum and Historical Society’s curator, Natalie McGuire invited local contemporary artists to critically engage with its collections through a series of interventions. Six artists' works were interwoven in the museum's galleries, interrogating and re-contextualizing the historical narratives on display. (Bush) Tea Services was exhibited in the Warmington Gallery, May-June 2018.

Also in 2018, Davis was invited by the Association of Caribbean Historians to launch The Empire Remains Shop publication at the 50th Association of Caribbean Historians Annual Meeting in Barbados where she was interviewed by Dr. Shani Ropers, Jamaican historian and to whom she served (Bush) Tea during our conversation.

● 2020 – re:wilding, part of the re: rural exhibition series, Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth, UK. Curated by Liv Penrose Punnett

● 2019-2020 – Heartseed, TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica. Curated by Miguel A. Lopéz

● 2016-2017 – This Ground Beneath My Feet – A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands, The Idea Lab, The Warfield Center, University of Texas, Austin, USA. Curated by Holly Bynoe

● 2003 – Evoking a Caribbean, Zemicon Gallery, Barbados. Curated by Therese Hadchity

● 2002 – Evoking a Caribbean, Art Museum of the Americas, OAS Gallery, Washington, D.C., USA2020

● 2000 – re/routed, CCA7, Laventille, Trinidad and Tobago

● 2000 – (up)routed, The Art Foundry, Four Square Factory, Barbados

● 1990 – Woman Scream Niche, The Barbados Museum & Historical Society, Barbados

● 1989 – I Wish You Would Hair Me, MFA Show, Mason Gross School for the Arts, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, NJ, USA

● 1988 – Caribbean Invitational I, National Art Gallery of Jamaica

Selected group exhibitions:

● 2021 – The Words Make Images, 5th International Biennale of Casablanca, Morocco. Curated by Christine Eyene

● And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers? Kunsthalle Wien, Austria. Curated by Miguel A. López

● 2020 – Florilegium: a gathering of flowers, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Curated by Emma Nicolson

● Caribbean Voices, 5th Demakijaz Women’s Film Festival, Lublin, Poland. Screening of my short film Public Beach Access.

● re:rural- four contemporary artists un-learn and re-imagine the rural, Haarlem Periodical, Wirksworth, UK. Curated by Liv Penrose Punnett. ● Seismic Movement- Movement of Goods and People as Colonial Exercise, Dhaka Art Summit, Seismic Movements, Bangladesh. Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt.

● 2019 – Social Geometry: Expanded Drawing Practices, Queens Park Gallery. Curated by Katherine Kennedy.

● 2018 - (Bush) Tea Services & Wild Plant Drawings, Artistic Interventions in the Galleries of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, ICOM International Museums Day, curated by Natalie McGuire.

● 2016 - (Bush) Tea Services, the Empire Remains Shop, curated by Cooking Sections

● Rum Retort, Greenock, Scotland. Curated by Mother Tongue

● 2015 - Grito de Libertad | Cry for Freedom, Inaugural Bienal Internacional de Asunción, Paraguay. Curated by Royce Smith.

Displaced Images / Images in Space, The 4th San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial: Latin America and the Caribbean. Curated by Gerardo Mosquera

● 2014 – Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, Perez Art Museum Miami, USA. Curated by Tobias Ostrander and Elvis Fuentes

● 2012 – 2013 – Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art & The Studio Museum in Harlem, USA, Curated by Elvis Fuentes.

● 2010 –Vous êtes ici / You are here / Usted está aqui / Cé ici-là minm ou yé/ Bo ta aki, Fondation Clement, Martinique. Curated by Dominique Brebion

● International Caribbean Triennial, MOMA, Santo Domingo, The Dominican Republic ● Close Encounters – Contemporary Art by Caribbean Women. The Art Gallery, Florida Gulf Coast University. Curated by Patricia Fay

● Rockstone & Bootheel – Contemporary West Indian Art. Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Curated by Yona Backer & Kristina Newman Scott

● 2009 – Integration and Resistance in the Global Era, The Tenth Havana Biennial, Curated by Jose Manuel Noceda

● The Road to Many: Towards a Genealogy of Barbadian Art, Queens Park Gallery, Barbados. Curated by Therese Hadchity

● 2008 – Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA. Curated by Tumelo Mosaka

Selected Visiting Artist | Invited Lecturer:

● 2020 – Guest panelist, Art, spaces and island ecologies, MTalks, MPavilion, Australia. In conversation with Torika Bolatagici (Community Reading Room, Australia) and Ema Tavola (Vunilagi Vou/Aotearoa New Zealand)

● AIR Encounters, in conversation with airWG (Amsterdam) on creating and sustaining artist in residency programmes

● Guest panelist, Paying for foreign developments: The Caribbean Conversation. WI Global, Series 1: Episode: 19.

● Guest artist speaker, Bush Tea Plots: Post Plantation Regenerative Strategies, WIRRED & Caribbean Permaculture Research Institute, Barbados ● 2019 – Reed Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, USA.

● Loving Difficult Landscapes – Art and Cultural Activism in a Caribbean context, Public lecture, TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica.

● Faculty Member, Independent Curators International, Curatorial Intensive, New Orleans. ● Invited Speaker – Apothecaries of Resistance, Latin American Studies, Emory University,

● 2017 – IN | A podcast on contemporary art presented by New Local Space in Kingston, Jamaica. In conversation about Tilting Axis.

● Local Address, School of Visual Arts MA Curatorial Practice program - After Trauma, a Nurturing Voice. A conversation between Annalee Davis and Erica James moderated by Mario Caro.

● 2016 – Visiting Artist, The Warfield Center, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas

● The Secret Ingredient – (Bush)Tea Services In conversation with hosts Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy, Austin, Texas

● Resident Artist as part of the Empire Remains Shop project by Cooking Sections, Delfina Foundation, London, UK.

● Designed the Colloquy: Wild Plants as Active Agents in the Process of Decolonisation, Moderated by Cooking Sections, with Niall Finneran (PhD., Archaeology | University of Winchester) and Janice Cheddie (PhD.).

● 2015 – Guest Panelist, Other Histories in Contemporary Art, Paco das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil.

● Guest Panelist, “Counterpoints” with Rocio Aranda-Alvarez and Tobias Ostrander, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World Symposium: Transnational Histories, Pérez Art Museum Miami, USA

● 2013 – Guest Panelist, “Sustainable Art Communities: Creativity and Policy in the Transnational Caribbean”, Institute for International Visual Arts (Iniva), London

● Guest Panelist, Hospitality and the Politics of Mobility, 18th Contemporary Art Festival SESC Videobrasil, 30 Years- Southern Panoramas, São Paulo, Brazil

● 2020 - Beach as Plot?, Issue 5: Ecocide, PREE – Caribbean. Writing.

● In This New World – A conversation between Marsha Pearce and Annalee Davis, Q&A (Quarantine and Art)

● The Healing Effects of Bush Tea – A Conversation with Barbadian Visual Artist, Annalee Davis, with Janine Mendes-Franco for Global Voices

● 2019 – On Being Committed to a Small Place–a selection of six of my essays. TEOR/éTica Publishing House, Local Writings. Critical Positions from Central America, the Caribbean and their Diasporas. Edited by Miguel A. López.

● 2018 - Tilling Rab Lands in a Post Plantation Economy - A Conversation on Caribbean Soil with Annalee Davis, The Empire Remains Shop // Columbia Books On Architecture and The City, Columbia University Press, Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernandez Pascual.

● 2017 - Champagne tastes and mauby pockets: towards healthy cultural eco systems in Barbados. Sustainable art communities // Contemporary creativity and policy in the transnational Caribbean, edited by Leon Wainwright and Kitty Zijlmans, Manchester University Press.

● Guest co-editor, Small Axe Issue # 52 | Art as Caribbean Feminist Practice

● Sweeping Fields where History still Groans | Making Space for Wild Plants. Article in The Forager Magazine, Bangalore, India

● 2015 – Self-recognition: The Shock of Seeing Yourself in the Mirror, ARC Magazine

● 2011 – Present: Founder & Director, The Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc.

● 2012 – Present: Co-founder/co-director, Caribbean Linked

● 2014 – Present: Co-founder/co-director, Tilting Axis

• Veerle Poupeye. Caribbean Art. London; Thames and Hudson; 1998.

• Stephens, Melissa (10 November 2017). Cosmopolitan Creoles and Neoliberal Mobility in Annalee Davis's On the Map. ISBN 9780773552050.
• This Ground Beneath My Feet - A Chorus of Bush In Rablands– http://rablands.annaleedavis.com
• TEORé/Tica– https://issuu.com/teoretica/docs/pub_eloc5
• Lips, Sticks and Marks – Exhibition Catalogue, Group Exhibition at The Art Foundry, Barbados, 1998 Barbados - Annalee Davis, Joscelyn Gardner; Trinidad & Tobago; Susie Dayal, Irenee Shaw; Aruba - Alida Martinez, Osaira Muyale; Jamaica - Roberta Stoddart– https://fcd17b62-2ec4-4ce5-8701-cf90a26cd17a.filesusr.com/ugd/0756e4_67d52404ac4d404c87b8f54ced591d61.pdf

• Official website