Wilding
Sour grass is a wild and drought-resistant, hardy botanical that grows in abundance across Barbados, Bequia and other tropical climates of the Global South. It grows steadfast and upright during each dry season, while extending its vast, interconnected root structure underground to help reduce soil erosion once rainfall returns to the parched Earth. This tufted perennial springs back well after burning, its life force anchored in its very way of being.
Drawing inspiration from this perennial’s tenacity and ability to survive irrespective of external conditions – whether scarcity or stimuli – we tap into its enduring, entangled root stalk system to frame our actions and thinking.
Sour grass weaves both of our island homes together, connecting the seedbed of our collective identities and consciousness to elements of the unseen, while binding them to a broader Caribbean identity. This is an in-between place of curiosity from which we come to a sense of belonging, and a realisation of how to remain wild and free in the face of violent histories, insecurities and uncertainties.
Plot
The quintessence of Sour Grass’ collaborative work values Caribbean civilization as the bedrock from which our creative offerings emanate and which we choose to nurture and foster. Our region shares histories, geographical space, geological traits, distinct political values, social values and a fundamental connection with the phenomenon of creolisation, all of which have combined to form a unique yet diverse cultural nexus.
We bring Caribbean contemporary art and thought practices to the forefront of local, regional and transnational cultural exchange. Our rituals and processes align with slow cultural work, grounded in ethics of witnessing, curiosity and care.
Working collaboratively on long-term transnational partnerships will allow Sour Grass to grow our art communities and to expand visibility and the awareness of cultural production emanating from and concerned with the Caribbean’s position within the global geopolitical framework.
Manifesto
Sour Grass is a decolonial act of resistance, and an attempt to remain wild and free in a space of historical oppression.
Our work mitigates the undervaluing of our creative spirit and cherishes the creativity and resiliencies that runs throughout the archipelago.
We cherish the mundane, the experiential and the supernatural.
Our work is an active gift of sisterhood, community and love, rich with the fibre of collective imaginations and our ancestors.
We sustain ourselves through experimentation and curiosity.
We involve ourselves in the mysteries and ferociousness of the Caribbean imagination.
We uphold traditions of alchemy and acknowledge our multiple histories, modernities and imaginations.
Offerings
Sour Grass is a curatorial duo and experiment founded by Holly Bynoe and Annalee Davis in 2020. This venture seeks to work with artists and creative practitioners from the Caribbean and across its diaspora, to build transnational relationships with museums, cultural institutions, collectors, publishers, biennales, and both private and public entities.
Sour Grass is particularly interested in alternative arts pedagogy, building discursive programming, and connecting with global worldviews and mythoi, bringing to life affinities and parallels with the Caribbean. Sour Grass functions as a decolonial body and a bridge to activate cultural manifestations of seeding, cross pollination, germination, cultivation and harvest.
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Partnerships
Co-founders
Annalee Davis' hybrid practice is as a visual artist, cultural activist, and writer. Her work sits at the intersection of biography and history, focussing on post-plantation economies by engaging with a particular landscape of Barbados. Her studio, located on a working dairy farm that operated historically as a 17th century sugarcane plantation, offers a critical context for her work. Drawing, walking, making (bush) teas, and growing living apothecaries, Annalee’s practice suggests future strategies for repair and thriving while investigating the role of botanicals and living plots as ancestral sites of refusal, counter-knowledge, community, and healing.
Her studio, located on a working dairy farm, operated historically as a 17thC sugarcane plantation, offering a critical context for her practice by engaging with the residue of the plantation. She has been making and showing her work regionally and internationally since the early nineties.
In 2011, Annalee founded Fresh Milk, an arts platform and micro-residency programme. In 2012 she co-founded Caribbean Linked, an annual residency in Aruba, cohering emerging artists, writers and curators from the Caribbean and Latin America. In 2015, she co-founded Tilting Axis, an independent visual arts platform bridging the Caribbean through annual encounters.
From 2016-2018, she was Caribbean Arts Manager with the British Council, developing programming in Cuba, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and part-time tutor at Barbados Community College (2005-2018). She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art (1986) and an MFA from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1989).
Website
Instagram
Holly Bynoe is an independent curator, writer, spiritualist, Earth Ally and researcher from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Bynoe is the co-founder of ARC Magazine, co-director of Caribbean Linked, a regional residency program held annually in Aruba supporting cultural exchange, and co-founder of Tilting Axis, the annual meeting charting arts activism, decolonial methodologies and models of creative sustainability across the region. Bynoe held a 5-year tenure as Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas.
In 2020, she joined social arts non-profit, The Hub Collective Inc based on Bequia to help generate their sustainable, environmental, memory and heritage pillars and is co-founder of Sour Grass, a curatorial experiment supporting contemporary Caribbean art practice.
She is currently a PhD Candidate in the “Shared Island Stories Between Scotland and the Caribbean: Past, Present, Future” at the University of St. Andrews and is living and working between Scotland and the Caribbean.
Website
Instagram
Annalee and Holly, 2012 in sour grass on Walker’s Dairy, St. George, Barbados.
Holly and Annalee at Kunstinstituut Melly supporting the work of Kelly Sinnapah Mary in June 2023.
