Shifting the Centre: Grenada as Reference Exhibition Video
ICF’s Shifting the Centre: Grenada as Reference exhibition presented in partnership with Black Cultural Archives (16 March – 4 June 2023)
Grenada as Reference was the first iteration of ICF’s Shifting the Centre project. This exhibition displayed archival materials relating to the Grenadian Revolution (1979-1983) at Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. The exhibition was curated by ICF curator Orsod Malik.
Grenada as Reference was an invitation to think about world history from the vantage point of a small island nation, which was home to the first revolutionary government in the English-speaking Caribbean between 1979-1983. In this relatively brief historical moment, the Grenadian people engaged in a collective process that reoriented their country’s resources, economy, and education away from neo-colonial interests and towards their self-determination.
This exhibition does not intend to rely on a timeline or lay claim to a single sequence of events. Rather, the exhibit enacts a set of open-ended questions: how can these materials be contextualised? What can be learned from them? What silences do they fill and where do silences remain? Are there teachings from this moment that can be applied to our present? And why isn’t Grenada referenced more widely?
Shifting the Centre is International Curators Forum’s archival activation project dedicated to excavating the radical observations, emancipatory dreams, and revolutionary practices of anticolonial thinkers to develop counter approaches by asking: what kinds of ideas emerge when those resisting dominant forces are the protagonists of world history?
Exhibition video shot and edited by Emmy Yoneda.
The exhibition was made possible with support from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Arts Council England.
Shifting the Centre forms part of ICF’s multi-season Systems Reclaimed Project.
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