This month’s edition of The Armory Show centres the Caribbean in both its curated sections and how stands are situated in relation to the fair’s two primary entrances. Organisers have rearranged the fair’s layout to put artists and galleries from the region and its diasporas in the foreground. In total, around 230 galleries from more than 30 countries will participate this year (24-27 September), with the sections devoted to emerging galleries and solo presentations taking more square footage.
This edition’s floorplan uses the Javits Center’s two main entrances to introduce visitors to distinct geographic curatorial narratives. The south entrance will lead attendees directly into the fair’s Caribbean focus, bringing together galleries and artists from across the region and the wider Americas. Among the programming highlights at the south entrance is El Apartamento, the Havana-founded gallery, which is showing a group exhibition of Cuban artists, alongside solo presentations by the Haitian American artist Kathia St. Hilaire on Perrotin’s stand, the California- and Colombia-based painter Shara Mays with Ronchini and the Brazilian artist Antonio Luiz Morais de Andrade with the São Paulo-based Galeria Raquel Arnaud.
The fair’s north entrance puts the emphasis on galleries from the US and especially New York, highlighting the city’s enduring role in shaping contemporary art. New York-based exhibitors include Sean Kelly, the newly renamed Norr Cohan, Miles McEnery Gallery, Hollis Taggart, Marc Straus Gallery and Dimin. International dealers including Templon, Mennour, Victoria Miro, Ben Brown Fine Arts and Nara Roesler will also feature in this section.
Younger galleries have a more prominent role in this year’s fair. The Presents and Solo sections—dedicated to galleries established within the last 12 years and single-artist presentations, respectively—have both expanded by around 20% from last year. Solo will comprise around 25 exhibitors, while Presents will feature around 55 galleries, including first-time participants Adegbola Gallery from Lagos, New York-based galleries Amanita and Management, Catinca Tabacaru (which operates spaces in Bucharest and Harare, Zimbabwe) and Rajiv Menon Contemporary from Los Angeles. The section will also include Margot Samel, this year’s recipient of the Gramercy International Prize, which awards a complimentary stand to a New York gallery making its debut at the fair.
A Caribbean framework
The Armory Show’s director, Kyla McMillan, says the Caribbean and its diasporas were chosen as the fair’s geographic theme this year partly because the region serves as a connecting point for much of the Americas, stretching from the southern edge of North America, through Central America and the Caribbean islands to the northern coast of South America.
“It felt like a really exciting opportunity to speak about the throughlines in the region that are really important for us [as a] New York fair that is very reflective of a diaspora, but also feels regional,” she says. That thinking extends into the fair’s curated programme, with both the Platform and Focus sectors using the Caribbean as a shared point of departure, though the two sections take markedly different approaches.
Platform, devoted to large-scale works and curated this year by Jovanna Venegas of SculptureCenter in Queens, examines architecture, materiality and resourcefulness across the Caribbean through sculpture and installation. McMillan says the section is intended to broaden conventional ideas of Caribbean art by exploring how artists respond to the region’s physical and environmental conditions. Highlights include works by the Dominican-born artist Bony Ramírez (presented by Regularnormal), the Dominican American artist Lucia Hierro (showing with Marc Straus Gallery), the Cuban-born artist Rafael Domenech (with 193 Gallery), the sculptor Zenobia Lee (with Sea View), the Mexico-born artist Margarita Cabrera (with Jane Lombard Gallery), the Cuba-born artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons (with Galerie Barbara Thumm) and the Guyanese British artist Hew Locke (with Cristea Roberts Gallery).
“The goal is always to expand what we think Caribbean art can look like, or expand whatever the curatorial focus is,” McMillan says. “What’s been interesting is the exploration of material. Sometimes it is in response to resources available, sometimes it’s in response to ecological challenges—a lot of the Caribbean deals with hurricanes and what it is to rebuild after that.”
Visitors at last year’s Armory Show
Photo by Casey Kelbaugh/CKA
The fair’s Focus sector, curated by María Elena Ortiz of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, puts works by artists living in the Caribbean alongside those whose practices have been shaped by migration and diasporic communities, while also showcasing galleries from the region. Participants include Casa Hoffmann from Bogotá, which will show works by the Colombian artist Alba Triana; a joint stand from New York’s Henrique Faria Fine Art and Bogotá-based Galería SN featuring works by the Colombian painter Ana Fernández Mosseri and the Venezuelan multimedia artist Mercedes Elena González; the Brooklyn-based gallery Mimo and Hidrante from Puerto Rico showing the Dominican-born artist Ernesto Rivera and the Puerto Rican painter Ricardo Cabret; and Tern Gallery from the Bahamas showing Bahamian artists Gio Swaby and Kachelle Knowles. The section is complemented by presentations from galleries outside the region, including Tribeca’s Chozick Family Art Gallery presenting works by the Puerto Rican artist Sofía Del Mar Collins, the Chelsea-based Ethan Cohen Gallery showing the Jamaican American artist Renée Cox, Patron from Chicago showing works by the Jamaican artist Simon Benjamin, Lower East Side gallery Proxyco presenting the Dominican American artist Lizania Cruz, and the Miami-based spaces Mindy Solomon Gallery and Spinello Projects showing Yanira Collado and the brothers Elliot and Erick Jiménez, respectively.
McMillan says another thread running through this year’s fair is an emphasis on movement and performance as features of the region’s artistic traditions. “The Caribbean is a place where there are so many iterations of carnival—we’re thinking about procession, movement and performance as part of the work,” she says. “So many of the cultures and the art forms are rooted in activity. I’ve really been excited to see that come through.”
Shifting immigration policies
While The Armory Show celebrates the diasporas and influences of the Caribbean on New York and the rest of the Americas, the fair comes amid intensified US immigration enforcement since president Donald Trump’s return to office. In June, a ruling from the US Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti, a move that jeopardises the living situations of nearly one million people living in the US. Tougher visa scrutiny and border checks may have also discouraged some international visitors to the country: according to the National Travel and Tourism Office, international tourism to the US fell by 5.5% last year, representing around four million fewer visitors.
“We don’t know what the headline of tomorrow will be,” McMillan says “but I feel pretty confident that we’ve developed relationships with our galleries and they know that that conversation and that support is always something that we’re happy to continue.”
- The Armory Show, 24-27 September, Javits Center, New York