MALAS student curates “Echoes Across the Antilles” exhibit in Grinter Gallery

Maricarmen Torres Medina (MALAS 2023) seeks to broaden conceptions of Caribbean

MALAS 2023 graduate Maricarmen Torres Medina has curated the exhibit “Echoes Across the Antilles,” on display in the Grinter Gallery from April 28 until June 23. Working with Center affiliate faculty Jesús Fuenmayor, she developed the exhibit as part of the requirements to earn a graduate certificate in Curatorial Studies from the School of Art+Art History.

“Echoes Across the Antilles” is a culmination of Maricarmen’s intellectual journey at the Center for Latin American Studies, synthesizing her passion for the written word, curated collections, and Caribbean Studies. Pulling from the riches of the Smathers Library’s Latin American and Caribbean Collection, Maricarmen selected 24 works of writing from authors across the Caribbean and organized them by theme: geography, history, and bodies. They are presented in the gallery alongside excerpted quotes that provoke reflection on Caribbean identity, in English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, and Papamientu. Maricarmen positions the quotes next to, behind, and even in front of the books, physically integrating the concepts that thread through time, place, and genre.

Through this exhibit, Maricarmen encourages the visitor to reconsider their conception of the Caribbean and its peoples through the literary and intellectual work by them—perhaps even moving the viewer to check out one of the books from the library and reading more for themselves. “This exhibition invites us to relink, relate, and question our notions about the written work, and the region,” she writes in her artist’s statement. “Just as ‘echoes’ move, reverberate, and break silences, this book exhibition is a call to imagine the Antilles —and ourselves— through sensitivity.”

Eighteen different territories are represented in the exhibition: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Nicaragua, British Guyana, Belize, Suriname, Curaçao, Jamaica, Colombia. ◆