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Major group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego explores the Caribbean diaspora through recent art
silhouette of two men swinging masks against a cloudy sky

(January 4, 2024 – San Diego, California) – The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is proud to announce Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today on view from April 18, 2024 through July 28, 2024.

An innovative rethinking of art in the Caribbean diaspora, this major exhibition features an intergenerational group of artists who live and work across the Americas and Europe. Forecast Form challenges conventional ideas about the region and reveals the Caribbean as a place defined by constant exchange, displacement, and movement rather than by geography, language, or ethnicity.

Kathryn Kanjo, the David C. Copley Director and CEO at MCASD notes, “A large portion of MCASD’s curatorial heritage is the study and preservation of art that represents migratory movements and our border. We see key parallels in the stories and ideas presented in Forecast Form.”

At MCASD, Forecast Form is organized by Associate Curator Isabel Casso, who worked on the exhibition as the former Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow at MCA Chicago, where the exhibition originated. Casso said “MCASD is proud to be the final and only West Coast venue for Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today.”

Black and white image nine people lined up in a body of water-- bodies are more submerged in the water from right to left

Jeannette Ehlers, "Black Bullets" (2012).

The exhibition takes the global 1990s as a cultural backdrop. This decade of profound social, political, and economic transformation, likewise, had a major effect on art from the Caribbean. The period gave rise to a Pan-Caribbean exhibition model that attempted to represent the region’s complex, colonial histories through art. In contrast, Forecast Form focuses on the affinities shared between works made by artists who have ties to the region yet hold diverse personal identities, geographies, and histories. Using the weather’s constant movement as a metaphor for analyzing artistic practices, this expansive exhibition reveals new modes of thinking about identity and place. Through a deeply innovative exploration of form, Forecast Form positions the region as a bellwether for our rapidly shifting times, a place where the past, the present, and the future meet.

“The exhibition’s focus on diaspora acknowledges that the region has been and continues to be constituted by movement; most notably of people, both forced and voluntary, but also of global commodities, financial assets, oil barrels, and tropical storms,” said Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator Carla Acevedo-Yates in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

Working in cities across the globe, the exhibition’s artists include Candida Alvarez, Álvaro Barrios, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Christopher Cozier, Julien Creuzet, Peter Doig, Jeannette Ehlers, Tomm El-Saieh, Alia Farid, Rafael Ferrer, Denzil Forrester, Joscelyn Gardner, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Engel Leonardo, Daniel Lind-Ramos, Suchitra Mattai, Ana Mendieta, Lorraine O'Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Keith Piper, Freddy Rodríguez, Zilia Sánchez, and Adán Vallecillo.

Accompanying the exhibition is an expansive, 288-page catalogue featuring groundbreaking scholarship as well as extensive plate sections reproducing exhibition artworks in full color.

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Image of rolling, blurry mangoes on a rusted green, copper roof

Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Tropical Zincphony (Zincfonía tropical) (still) (2013).

Credits

Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Major support for Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate, Isabel Casso, former Susman Curatorial Fellow MCA Chicago now Associate Curator, MCASD, and Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

The presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is made possible by gifts to the annual operating fund.

Financial support is provided by the City of San Diego through the Commission for Arts and Culture.

About the catalogue

Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today exhibition catalogue. Edited by Carla Acevedo-Yates and published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and DelMonico Books · D.A.P. New York.

This volume features scholarly essays alongside richly illustrated plate sections and texts focused on an intergenerational group of 37 artists, the originating group presented at MCA Chicago, working across the Americas and Europe.

VISIT:

MCASD La Jolla, 700 Prospect St, La Jolla, 92037

https://mcasd.org/

PRESS CONTACT:

TR/PR | Toni Robin

tr@trprsandiego.com

858-4833918

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