Exhibition
This solo exhibition honours the artistic journey of Randy Chollette, a central figure in the art collective Native Sons and a pivotal contributor to the development of contemporary art in the Cayman Islands.
As an artist, musician and educator, Chollette’s creative process synthesises the energetic, physical, and mental self through a lens of spiritual inquiry. Reflecting on the dramatic transformation of the Cayman Islands in recent decades, his work excavates the intimate discourse between memory, place, and the embodied experience of his homeland.
The exhibition presents an exciting scope of Chollette’s practice, featuring familiar signature works alongside new creative explorations across diverse media. Together, these works examine dominant themes and methodologies of Chollette’s artistic practice, inviting visitors into moments of grounding and contemplation. The exhibition creates space for visitors to engage with the expanse of the human experience, as freedom operates as the generative principle and experiential core.
Chollette’s work has been included in significant national and international exhibitions and is in the collection of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, Cayman Islands National Museum, the Cayman Islands Cultural Foundation as well as private collections. Chollette’s work has been honoured by several distinctions including features on the cover of the Horizon Magazine, winning “Best in Show” at the 2002 Blue exhibition at Kensington Lott Fine Art Gallery, the McCoy Prize “People’s Choice” award in 2003, and subsequently 1st place for the 2004 McCoy Prize Art Award, among other merits.
Team
Kerri-Anne Chisholm, Guest Curator
Kerri-Anne Chisholm is a Caribbean cultural practitioner, social justice activist, and artist. Raised in the Cayman Islands, her deep ancestral ties to Jamaica, Cuba and Scotland inform her views on multicultural Caribbean identity, cultural production, and postcoloniality. Her creative practices explore human connection as a means of mediating social and personal identities using photography, curating, and sculpture.
She holds a BA in Fine Art and MA in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture, and has developed exhibitions as a curator and consultant at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, the University of Oxford (UK), Tate Modern (UK), and community projects within England and the Caribbean.
Chisholm is currently finalising her PhD research at the University of Reading, examining the Caribbean yard space as counterpart to traditional exhibition spaces, and how these sites intuitively foster identity negotiation, creativity, community dialogue and cohesion, and provide platforms for infra-political resistance.
About the Artist
Randy Chollette
b. 1975
George Town–born Randy Chollette is an intuitive, self-taught artist who earned recognition early in his career by winning ‘Best in Show’ at Blue, an exhibition at Kensington-Lott Fine Art Gallery in 2002, and The McCoy Prize People’s Choice Award in 2003. His work is often distinguishable by its signature black outlined mosaic configuration. A member of the Native Sons collective, he moves confidently between Realism and abstraction, and his Rastafarian beliefs are woven into the style and subject of his paintings. His work forms part of many private collections and the public collections of NGCI, the Cayman National Cultural Foundation, and the Cayman Islands National Museum. NGCI exhibitions include: Arreckly: Towards a Cultural Identity (2007), The Persistence of Memory (2011), Founded Upon the Seas (2012), tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), Native Sons – Twenty Years On (2016), Speak to Me (2016), Saltwater in their Veins (2017), Cross Currents – 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), and Island of Women: Life at Home During our Maritime Years (2020).
