I am the Alchemist

I Am the Alchemist Opens

Last night the Image Factory opened its latest exhibition called I am the Alchemist by Winsom Winsom. At around 7:30pm over 100 friends and guests assembled on the Factory riverside patio for the opening ceremony.

Yasser Musa, Image Factory director introduced Rev. Dr. Macarena Rose to do a prayer in English and Maya. He then invited the curator Gilvano Swasey to say a few words about the process of setting up the installation show. Swasey worked with Winsom for one week setting up the ten pieces in the show. Musa then said a few words thanking the crowd for showing support to the artist. He stated that Winsom’s work with the children of Christo Rey village in the Cayo district will be exhibited next month at the Factory. He praised the artist for her work with young people and welcomed her into the Image Factory family of artists.

Musa then invited Winsom Winsom to speak. She was in a joyful and appreciative mood as she addressed the crowd. She then performed a powerful poem about love while mixing elements into a ceramic jar. This performance captivated the audience as the artist delivered her prose in a passionate and deliberate manner. On completion the crowd erupted in applause for the fine performance.

Winsom then invited all the audience to connect to each other with a ribbon given to them upon entrance to the gallery. All complied and then one by one they filed into the gallery space. As they entered the space, Winsom collected the joined ribbons and blessed each participant with incense smoke and a feather.

Factory Books releases History of Economics in Belize

Factory Books releases History of Economics in Belize


Yesterday, Monday December 4th the Image Factory Art Foundation announced the release of a new book titled A Concise History of Economic Development in Belize 1981- 2005 written by noted academic Dr. Aondofe Joe Iyo.

In his introductory remarks director of the Image Factory Yasser Musa stated, “Dr. Aondofe Iyo is a special kind of academic. He has expanded the space of what academics should and can do in modern society. He has published many articles and books, teaches at the University, organized symposiums and engaged in numerous panel discussions. But these types of activities are par for the course among academics. He has gone further. His work with the African and Maya History Program is having an impact on the system of Education at all levels. He is playing a pivotal role in transforming the system, for this we are grateful and to him we are thankful. I congratulate him on this new effort to advance the debate in our society.”

Marion Palacio, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank who wrote the foreword for the book was on hand at the book presentation and stated, “Some readers will find the publication a provocative read n Belize’s economic history. Most persons will find Dr. Iyo’s work providing a chronology of the main features and problems that have challenged and continue to be a challenge for the Belizean economy.”

In his remarks at the opening Dr. Iyo stressed that his role as an academic is to contribute to public debate which he considers a vehicle for social change and economic transformation. Dr. Iyo earned a doctorate degree in African History from the University of Calabar, Nigeria (1990). He is a senior lecturer and director for Multi-cultural Studies, and African and Maya History Project, concurrently, at the University of Belize.

The book is arranged in six thematic chapters covering an overview of economic development, physical capital and technology, human capital and investment, fiscal and monetary policies, free trade and high investment, and the theory and practice of growth economics. The book ends with complete notes, references, list of figures, table and charts. The one hundred and fifty two (152) book is published and distributed by the Image Factory in Belize City and is available for $20.

contact: yasserart@yahoo.com for more information

Unfettered presented at the Factory

Today the Image Factory was venue for a press conference for the presentation of Unfettered -Poems by Kalilah Enriquez. The book is a publication of The Flaming Pen in Belmopan and includes 34 printed poems and a cd recording enclosed at the back of the book.

Kalilah Enriquez attended primary through high school in Belmopan. She attended Junior College in Belize City at St. Johns, and received a BA in communications and media from Fordham University in New York. She currently workss at Krem Radio in Belize City.

Her book is now available where books are sold.

Art In Cristo Rey

The village of Cristo Rey is located just outside Santa Elena in the Cayo district, Belize on the road to San Antonio. On Tuesday November 21, 2006 an amazing moment in Belizean art occured. With the drive and vision of artist Winsom Winsom the small Cristo Rey Primary School opened an art classroom with an inagural exhibition of sculpture, painting and batiks. It was an amazing accomplishment to see in the middle of the jungle and hills of Belize a space transformed.

Winsom worked with the students over a period of 1 year and involved them in the curatorial process with the kids setting up their own show. The principal of the school Mrs. Ana Aldana organized a special event for the opening of the art classroom and exhibition. She invited Image Factory artists Yasser Musa, Gilvano Swasey and Michael Gordon to be part of the occasion. Musa addressed the more than 200 students in attendance on the great work they have done and the inspiration their art space is to the country. Musa pledged the support of the Image Factory Art Foundation in imporving the facillity and invited Winsom Winsom to work with him in making sure Cristo Rey's student art is represented at next year's children's Festival of Arts at the Bliss in Belize City.

Landing soon in Costa Rica

The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Costa Rica, Mr. Ernesto Calvo Alvarez has written to artists Michael Gordon and Yasser Musa inviting them to participate in the regional contemporary art exhibition Landings4.

The exhibition will open on March 9, 2007. Musa intends to exhibit his new work The Diary of 100 Objects, a conceptual piece involving text and photos of emotionally charged objects that have a direct impact on his life. Gordon will exhibit a new series of cutOUTs, cardboard paintings of people.

Both artists work from the Image Factory on North Front Street in Belize City. Landings is a set of 10 exhibition curated by Belizean Joan Duran. After Landings4 in Costa Rica the show goes on to Washington DC, New York City, Havana, Cuba, Barcelona Spain and other destinations.

Over 20 artists from the Caribbean and Central America will make up the Landings 4 show.

Bye Bye Bye Bill

Bill Skinner, Image Factory's assigned Peace Corps for the past two years is leaving the Foundation and Belize on Monday November 20th. The Factory staff took him to a farewell lunch to Old Belize on Friday and we all had a great time. Bill moves on. Off to the great USA to study for a Master's Degree. He lives in Virginia, sorry, Pensylvania.

Belize Represents at the Havana Biennial

Art and the City

Belize joins 36 countries and over 100 artists at the 9th Havana Biennial

Monday March 27th, 2006

This evening the Morro Cabana Fortress in Havana, Cuba was host to the opening ceremonies of the 9th Havana Biennale. Some three thousand guests, visitors, artists, and curators gathered in the late evening for official ceremonies involving live classical and modern music, art performances and the simultaneous opening of over 50 spaces where artists from across the globe are presenting contemporary works of visual art.

Belize is represented with the North Front Street Project, a collective undertaking by artists Richard Holder, Santiago Cal and Yasser Musa and curated by Joan Duran.

Excerpts from Granma International Staff Writer Mireya Casteneda (March 26,2006)

The Havana Biennale, in its ninth edition, is a sign of spring for the visual arts and once again converts the capital into one great gallery. As has been the tradition since 1984, the encounter is marked “not only by the diversity of works, but also by the opening of new spaces of a public, representative or common nature.”

On this occasion the general theme is the Dynamics of Urban Culture and the intention is – according to cirtic Nelson Herrera Ysia – is not just to place works of art in those spaces but to have them participate in the very context of the work, as well as with people living or moving about in the framework of the city, thus provoking an interaction that is not fictitious or imposed.”

The Cuban capital is thus “generously offering its spaces so that artists can find a new and creative support for their practices and strategies, as much in its historic quarter as in its modern districts.”

Artists from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, The Dominican Republic and Trinidad-Tobago are participating for Latin America and the Caribbean.

All the exhibitions of artists invited to the Biennale or the special ones are related to urban culture, a theme magnificently selected by the curators because, to quote Herrera Ysla: “just by walking through any city we receive a universe of signs and symbols infinitely superior to those found in many museums and art galleries. The city is here and now, and has always been the finest place in the world in terms of influences or visual impacts on spectators without distinction of origin or social class.”

Except from the North Front Street catalogue

North Front Street Project

Belize has a five year history of contemporary art participation at the international level starting in March 2000 with the presentation of ZERO- new Belizean art in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. This presentation The North Front Street Project is the first such collective enterprise by Belizean artists. All three artists belong to the current generation, and make art in different formats. Santiago Cal is a sculptor, Richard Holder a photographer and Yasser Musa a conceptual artist.

The North Front Street Project combines the “White Dogs” of Cal, “The Street People” of Holder and “historical and contemporary images, text and objects” of Musa. The Project is pixels that make up a single scan of a street holding over 300 years of memories.

The White Dogs

North Front Street is a main artery in Belize City. It is the landing point of cruise tourists, and the selling point of drug dealers. Half the street is open to traffic in both directions and the other half is one way. The Street is full of stray and mangy dogs of all breeds, sizes and colors. Cal’s “White Dogs” are sterilized beasts whose potency resides in their contorted posture. The “Dogs” are dancing on a tight string as in limbo neither alive nor dead. The Street is the theatrical stage where the dogs expand our image of abandonment and contrast.

The Street People

Holder’s images of men in the act of becoming wasted by alcohol show the street as one grand bar. The liquor portraits are unkind memorabilia of persons connected to a desolate urban environment. Their isolation is celebrated. While Cal’s “Dogs” offers distance Holder’s images serves up a deranged intimacy. The nighttime lonesomeness of Holder’s characters contrasts with the regular daytime combustion of thousands of North American tourists and local vendors engaged in a free for all bazzaar hot and sweaty with the smell of coconut sun block.

History Absorbed

Musa’s scan of the street combine historical rum bottles linked metaphorically to Holder’s modern Belikin beer bottles with images of the street spanning almost 100 years. He looks at the street like a train track with the rails representing a merge of colonial architecture and ferroconcrete modern buildings. Musa’s work offers projections and installations to the meta-narrative of the Street as a colonial framework morphing into a post-modern tourism buffet table. The Street began as a way station for wood to be transshipped to England. The Street was built on swamp and is bordered by the Halouver Creek and empties at its end into the Caribbean Sea. So today the street that once saw the departure of wood once departed now welcomes over 1 million cruise tourists. Musa’s presentation attempts to portray the street as a pulsing vibration of history and urban soaked life.

Adan Vallecillo at the Factory

Review by Andrew Steinhauer

Jokey Art, Highbrow Art & Stigmas

“Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.” by comedian Woody Allen.

A young Honduran artist, Adan Vallecillo’s exhibition at the avant-garde art gallery Image Factory cryptically titled “The Asepsic’s Power” has to be one of the loopiest, oddball shows venued in Belize. It’s challenging stuff and I’m certainly intrigued by Mr. Vallecillo’s chutzpah in showing such crazy artwork. Shades of the heyday of Marcel Duchamp and his motley crew of anarchists- the Dadaists.

The Duchamp connection is a key to decoding Vallecillo’s work. Duchamp questioned the parameters of what does and does not constitute “art”; oftentimes in a punning, sarcastic way. Duchamp poked fun at art’s high falutin’ seriousness and ostentatious self-importance. He picked the nouveau riche collector’s inflated ego while mocking the elitist museum mindset of fine art.

In 1915 Duchamp exhibited in a sophisticated art gallery a snow shovel he purchased in a hardware store and humorously titled it, “In Advance of the Broken Arm”. Many volumes have been penned by art historians on the importance of this so-called “Readymade”. The rap goes that the Shovel blurs the line between art and life. The utilitarian Shovel’s displacement in effect becomes a crucial component in its content. Historian Nesbit writes, “In the ready-mades, Duchamp seized control of the dialogue dictated by the shop window: the model is taken out of circulation, often given an absurd title, hung in a limbo, and effectively silenced. This shovel will never be used, bent, rusted, or fall obsolete” (“Ready-Made” 61-2). Humor became a deadly weapon in destroying traditional notions about art and the creative act. Similarly Vallecillo’s art also doesn’t shy away from a humorous spin on the codified norms in the world of contemporary art.

In the multi-part piece, titled “Festin II”, Vallecillo nails 20 porcelain Chinese soup spoons in a straight line across the wall of the gallery which is painted jet black. In each spoon is glued a human tooth. The whole shebang is melodramatically spotlighted. “Festin II” can be interpreted to be a glib, tongue-in-cheek (or is it tooth in spoon) switcheroo on the traditional functions of utilitarian objects (spoons) and body parts (teeth). Vallecillo reverses the expected, making the spoons engulf the teeth instead of teeth (in the mouth) engulfing the spoon. Reverse expectations tend to throw one off balance conceptually; resulting in a kind of ridiculousness that roams in the domain of humor.

For me any artist that wades into the rip-tides of humor has to be admired. Simply because humor ain’t easy. The dynamics of humor are tricky at best and can’t be readily systematized. The comedic conundrum that any form of jokiness has to contend with is: What tickles one funny-bone, offends the next. One man’s joke is the next man’s sacrilege. “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” was allegedly the deathbed remark of British actor-comedian Sir Donald Wolfit, and humor in the realm of art is at least twice as difficult as humor on stage. Why? Because for inexplicable reasons too much art is just so self righteous, staid and up tight. For some reason when many artists create their work the end result is gloomy and portentous. It’s as if the proverbial stick was stuck up a place the sun doesn’t shine. “Yeaaaaagggggh!!!” to quote the Howard Dean scream.

Other artists that have created significant art within the context of humor are: Phillip Guston and Keith Haring’s cartoon paintings; Vito Acconci’s performance pieces like “Seedbed” (1972); Alex Katz’s fantasy Papier-Mâché environments, Gilbert & George’s parody vaudeville skits and William Wegman’s stagy photos of his Weimaraner imitating human -gestures are a few that come to mind.

Other pieces in “The Asepsic’s Power” that simultaneously tickle the funny bone and provoke are “Atrapasuenos”, 2005 (Dream Catcher), a combination ink drawing with colander attached to the bottom edge; “Explosion”, 2006, that whimsically juxtaposes a typical touristy souvenir sea shell and a handful of Q-tips fanning outward in a configuration reminiscent of a cartoon bomb detonating; “Protesis I thru III”, 2006, which is like a three part homage to the happy homemaker/ contented gardener with a witty contrast between real object and depicted object where the rendered image comes off with more veracity than the actual object. That series lets it all hangs out.

The two strongest pieces in this ultimately strong show are “Silencio” 2005, and “Los Amantes”, 2005. “Silencio” incorporates six small plastic containers, cotton and pen and ink drawings hung vertically on the wall. The top plastic container is filled with cotton and has a meticulous drawing of a telephone across the surface. A rendering of a spiral telephone chord snakes over the next lower four containers ending up on the bottom container with a schematic drawing of a horn (speaker) depicting waves of sound blaring from it. A visual “shaggy dog” tale.

“Los Amantes” (The Lovers, 2005) is the eerie knock out in the exhibit. The piece is composed of two toot brushes, one red and one blue, sans bristles lying on a shelf connected by a handful of drooping dental floss strands. Highly imaginative use of visual metaphor. A sadly amusing take on the intimacy and transitory nature of love.

Some art purists might find Vallecillo’s sensibility a tad too frivolous. Might find his work a little too iconoclastic; too unconventional. Some might feel humor as no place in highbrow art. For those traditionalists that prefer their art straight lased and sweet, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake”.

Vallecillo has a way with turning usual preconceptions on their ear, and in so doing creating a jokey displacement on highbrow art conventions.

Edgy Belizean Contemporary Art in Merida

Edgy Belizean Contemporary Art in Merida
posted (January 31, 2006)

Belizean contemporary art has certainly not caught on locally, but thanks to influence peddling in foreign lands by some hard working art promoters, the art world illuminati thinks that Belize is a hub of creative art. However inaccurate, that image was powerfully reinforced last week in Merida where Belize's Cultural Ambassador, Joan Duran, who hails from Benque Viejo via Spain, put together Landings 2, a grouping of young contemporary artists from Latin America and the Caribbean. Our camera was there for take-off.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,The man in charge of landing the entire show, the pilot, so to speak, who had to navigate the courses for 19 of the most daring contemporary artists from Latin America and the Caribbean is Joan Duran. He is the project coordinator, the man in charge, the goalie as he is called, and the curator. But during the weeks that it took to set up the show, he never visited the space even once. In fact, on this the opening night is the first time he saw any of it.
Joan Duran,"This I the first time I set foot in this space. The first time was an hour ago. Everything was monitored from a distance. The whole trick of this exhibition is these guys set up the show themselves. You have been videotaping me from the very entrance and I think I have a lot of emotions…it's a very unique situation."
A unique situation and a singular show. It features artists from Haiti, Aruba, Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, Mexico, and of course, Belize. With faraway ideas, and challenging curation, they overtook the Center for Visual Arts in Merida City. The center used to be an elementary school, but these classrooms were converted and Belizeans like Richard Holder used it for his Three Maria's, Santiago Cal had his Sighted Sparks, Yasser Musa featured his Condensed Milk Project, Sean Paul Taegar teamed up with Guatemalan Yasmin Haj in a post confidence building maneuver for 's Saga no. 1, Haitian Maxcence Dennis had a video installation, Cuba's Samuel and Alexis did a piece called Mute, that seemed to be every school teacher's fantasy, and speaking of fantasy, there's the Costa Rican's Lucia Madriz and her piece Siliconia Decorata. And that's just some of the daring pieces that the show serves up - in an exhibit that the organizer says is truly world class.
Joan Duran,"This was the cutting of the umbilical cord because I think now all of them, with no exception, they are ready to handle the installations, the projects, by themselves. This is a first class, world-class exhibition. This exhibition could be at any ritzy top museum in the planet and it would be, the expression if you like, second to none."
One of the most compelling was Aruban Ryan Duber's compelling video on his own country sexual and global politics. It's a mix of Natalie Holloway imagery; Holloway is of course the American girl who went missing in Aruba. Here, her image is immortalized as a pop icon, a mascot on the Aruban flag, her face imprinted on chairs. And if that doesn't get you, who can resist Daddy Yankee's Gasolina set to a montage of Aruba's church crosses. Aduber esplained.
Ryan Duber,"It's based on three in a triangle. The triangle is the missing white female syndrome, that Natalie Holloway case, and of course the Mamacita, and of course Aruba itself and they are all backed up in this sexy, sexy chocolate black box. Everybody is a star so, she is totally entitled of being this icon…everybody wants to be Natalie Holloway, everybody wants to have sex with three guys, everybody wants to have sex with the first boy you meet on vacation for example. So be watching for the movie: 'Aruba, Sex Island.'"
And on this meridian night, the sex was served and the evening capped by an avante garde electronic post-punk trio.
Landings will run at Merida's Center for Visual Arts for three months.
Find this article at: http://www.7newsbelize.com/archive/01310609.html

A big Hit - Point of View opens

Point of View
Young Belizean Photographers
Report from Channel 7 News - Belize /February 1st, 2006

The World Through The Eyes Of Children...
In September of last year, 66 school children in communities across Belize were given cameras and told to go out and capture the world in their eyes. The results are astounding in their honesty, invention, directness and freedom from cliché. The best of these hundreds pictures have been put on display at the House of Culture, and believe us, they are so fresh that they startle. Have a look.
Though they have a distinctly professional flair, these diverse and colorful pictures of Belize City, Arenal, Biscayne, and Crooked tree were all captured by children. 66 children, most of them primary school aged boys and girls used 23 disposable cameras, and 36 thirty-five millimeter cameras to capture these images. It's a project called Point of View, funded by a British NGO which seeks to encourage creative expression though photography. Instructors taught the children 5 basic principles of photography, gave them the cameras for three months and set them loose. Many exposures later, this is the result. Seasoned photographer Rowland Parks is impressed.
Rowland Parks, Photographer"I am totally amazed that they have so much talent in the schools and they are just beginning to get it out right now. One of my favorite pictures here is a boy flying through the window. I think that is an amazing pictures, it requires a kind of precision to get a photograph like that and imagine that a kid is doing that right now in primary school. Can you imagine like when that kid gets older what kind of work he'll be producing if he sticks with photography?"
Jules Vasquez,So there is hope for great photography yet to come out of Belize?
Rowland Parks,"There's a lot, there's a lot. These pictures are incredibly done."
Yasser Musa, Artist"Photography is language and visual language is the main language spoken by people today. Many people think we still speak what we are doing now but I really believe people interpret images, people project images, and they learn and conceive and develop their lives through images. And obviously, I don't think that such a show could be done twenty years ago in Belize. The visual sophistication that you will see is as a result of the kids developing through television, through the visual culture we are in and all of a sudden we just open the door by giving them a camera. But that was their in their head but twenty years ago this could never be revealed. It is revealed today because we are finally asking them:, 'look instead of giving you a pen to write a paragraph, we're giving you a camera to write your paragraph.'"
And while the critics and aficionados gush at surprising sophistication and genuine technical merit, the children are just genuinely happy and pleased to share their small worlds with the wider world.
Primitiva Ruiz, Arenal "This is my little brother and I am brushing my teeth and I took the picture and I just looked at my little brother and took the picture. I'm still very happy because all the people tell me that photo is very beautiful."
Thyrell Hyde, St. Mary's School"I was just trying to capture the sea because that day the sea was very beautiful and clean."
Jules Vasquez,When you see the image through the viewfinder its a different thing from what ends up on film, how did you feel when you saw the final result, the final photo?
Thyrell Hyde,"I was proud of my picture because I knew it was going to look good."
Glendy Mahitani, Holy Redeemer School"Its very different. Its very hard to see the elastic because they were playing elastic."Jules Vasquez,Are you pleased with the pictures?
Glendy Mahitani,"Yes very much."
Ena Encalada,"Well this girl didn't want me to take her picture but I just went in front of her and snapped it. She was so scared and I just took it because I think it would have been beautiful with all the different backgrounds and different faces."
Sean Escobar,"I tricked my cousin into closing her eyes and I told her boyfriend to hug her and then when I took the picture she opened her eyes and she got surprised."
Jules Vasquez,So you are like the media then, you sneak up on people and taken them in comprising situations?
Sean Escobar,"Kind of, yeah."
Jules Vasquez,How do you feel about the picture?
Sean Escobar,"I asked my cousin if I could display it and she said yes and I feel kind of good."
Edwin Chan, Mount Carmel High School "Like ten minutes it took me to compose because my grandpa was resting in our hammock and I just go, and because he can't see, so I just told him to get prepared so he got prepared in his hammock and I took the photograph."
Jules Vasquez,What's the message you're trying to communicate with this picture?
Michael Alamilla, Holy Redeemer"That sports are good for you and I want everything."
Idel Sanchez, Mount Carmel High School "Up there in my picture is two little boys playing plastic with balls. They're playing because Arenal is one village but its divided in two pieces: one piece in Guatemala and one piece in Belize. We have Arenal Belize and Arenal Guatemala so they play there and they say here is Belie and here is Guatemala and they are playing with that."
And it's that magic of preserving the ephemeral, and then sharing it with the world that has these children flushed with their first success. Now, these budding talents just want to keep snapping away.
Jules Vasquez,Do you want to continue taking photos?
Sean Escobar,"Yes sir, I love the camera."
Jules Vasquez,Do you feel some magic in photograph?
Glendy Mahitani,"Its amazing, very amazing."
Jules Vasquez,And how do you feel to have your stuff exhibited here?
Glendy Mahitani,"I feel proud."Idel Sanchez,"I think that it is good because you capture times that will never come again.
"The show is currently on display at the House of Culture and admission is free.