REVIVE

Craft has a long tradition in the Cayman Islands. Initially born out of necessity, functional crafts soon became highly decorative, evolving into our earliest tangible forms of creative expression. Today, the boundaries between craft and art continue to dissolve. Where thatch baskets were once purely functional, Caymanian artisans have begun to experiment with forms and decoration.

This exhibition featured a diverse range of contemporary craft objects from all six districts, by makers who use traditional and cutting-edge techniques across diverse techniques and materials such as basketry, ceramics, textiles, fibre, paper, glass, metal, and wood. Some of the featured artists sought to maintain and revive longstanding traditional forms, while others combined old techniques with modern materials. The connecting threads between all the featured works were the process, technique, and material used but ultimately the hands of their makers themselves.

Through REVIVE, NGCI sought to open the conversation about the role craft plays in our society, to engage visitors in the creative process, to illustrate the evolution of historical traditions in the twenty-first century and to contextualise craft within the wider history of Caymanian art.

Curation and exhibition design by Natalie Urquhart, with research support from Kerri Anne Chisholm, Simon Tatum and Jessica Ebanks.