The Gri Gri Project

02/11/2024

Bajo el Sol Gallery to host inaugural book launch & signing of historian, David Knight Sr.’s book,

"On the Outskirts of Eden: Exploring the Roots of Creole Society in the Virgin Islands 1492-1692."
Today, Saturday, November 2nd starting at 4pm join us at Bajo el Sol Gallery in Mongoose Junction, St. John for a book launch and signing with Virgin Islands historian David Knight Sr. as he shares his most recent book, "On the Outskirts of Eden: Exploring the Roots of Creole Society in the Virgin Islands 1492-1692."

For those who came of age steeped in the carefully crafted narratives of New World colonization espoused in the modern era, it is easy to have missed the more-nuanced aspects of social development that took place in small-island communities throughout the Lesser Antilles during the postmedieval period. On the Outskirts of Eden shines new light on this little-understood, yet critically important period in Eastern Caribbean history.

About the Author: David W. Knight Sr. is a cultural resource consultant, historian, and author. He has spent much of his life exploring the primary records of the Virgin Islands and Danish West Indies in libraries, repositories, and archives both abroad and throughout the Caribbean region. His professional goal has always been to bring the rich historical legacy of the Virgin Islands into sharper focus through broader public access, education, and awareness.

He is the former Territorial Chair of the Virgin Islands State Historic Preservation Commission, and a past-president of the St. John Historical Society. Along with his research and writing, Mr. Knight remains active in preservation advocacy and educational outreach throughout the Territory.

Located at Mongoose Junction on St. John, Bajo El Sol Gallery, & Art Bar is a hybrid art gallery, bookstore, café, rum and cocktail bar. As a gallery and events space, Bajo El Sol is dedicated to offering the best in Virgin Islands fine art and cultural expression.

24/08/2024

Don't miss our film screening tonight at Bajo El Sol Gallery & Art Bar.. The VI Crawl team is one of the brightest & most creative groups of young people in the Virgin Islands. I just love all their projects.

We also have an upcoming customer appreciation event. And yes, we we will be open throughout September!

Tonight, August 24th at 7:30 pm the Gri Gri Project and the St. John Film Society will host VI Crawl’s award-winning Sun, Sand & Scenes A short film series featuring “Love Chain” and “Hitch”.
VI Crawl recognizes that the Virgin Islands is a dynamic film destination, filled with rich stories & natural storytellers. Through their Sun, Sand & Scenes short film series, VI Crawl collaborates with individuals to explore their passions in filmmaking. Two films within this project named “Love Chain” and Hitch received the Fan Favorite award at the Paradise 48 Film Festival in St. Thomas. Hitch also received the Best Actor award, Best Scoring, and Best Editing.

VI Crawl is a USVI nonprofit that aims to empower Virgin Islanders through culture, art education, virtual platforms, and community events. The event will also serve as the August edition of their monthly event Cocktails and Conversations, an in-person event series to promote conversations on various topics in the community. Attendees will have an opportunity to meet with the founders of the non-profit, Khalarni Rivers and Nyaila Callwood and engage in a Q&A.

The founders of VI Crawl Khalarni Rivers and Nyaila Callwood met as students at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), where they quickly realized their overlapping passion for creative arts, cultural enrichment & artrepreneurship, a blending of innovation in business design with an artistic focus. This award-winning team of young Virgin Islanders has a combined 15+ years of experience in program design & 20+ years in performing arts. Since 2019, VI Crawl has partnered with UVI and many local nonprofits to coordinate learning programs rooted in cultural exploration, performing arts, and professional development for a range of ages.

More information about the film screening and about future events can be found by contacting the gallery at 340-693-7070 or [email protected]. Funded in part by the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts.

17/08/2024

Due to the effects of tropical storm Ernesto we have rescheduled our upcoming event today at Bajo El Sol Gallery.

On August 24th at 7pm the Gri Gri Project and the St. John Film Society will host VI Crawl’s award-winning Sun, Sand & Scenes A short film series featuring “Love Chain” and “Hitch”.

VI Crawl recognizes that the Virgin Islands is a dynamic film destination, filled with rich stories & natural storytellers. Through their Sun, Sand & Scenes short film series, VI Crawl collaborates with individuals to explore their passions in filmmaking. Two films within this project named “Love Chain” and Hitch received the Fan Favorite award at the Paradise 48 Film Festival in St. Thomas. Hitch also received the Best Actor award, Best Scoring, and Best Editing.

VI Crawl is a USVI nonprofit that aims to empower Virgin Islanders through culture, art education, virtual platforms, and community events. The event will also serve as the August edition of their monthly event Cocktails and Conversations, an in-person event series to promote conversations on various topics in the community. Attendees will have an opportunity to meet with the founders of the non-profit, Khalarni Rivers and Nyaila Callwood and engage in a Q&A.

The founders of VI Crawl Khalarni Rivers and Nyaila Callwood met as students at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), where they quickly realized their overlapping passion for creative arts, cultural enrichment & artrepreneurship, a blending of innovation in business design with an artistic focus. This award-winning team of young Virgin Islanders has a combined 15+ years of experience in program design & 20+ years in performing arts. Since 2019, VI Crawl has partnered with UVI and many local nonprofits to coordinate learning programs rooted in cultural exploration, performing arts, and professional development for a range of ages.

More information about the film screening and about future events can be found by contacting the gallery at 340-693-7070 or [email protected]. Funded in part by the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts.

17/07/2024

28/06/2024

THEY REACH! Join us today at Bajo El Sol Gallery for another Crucian Bayside Creations Pop-Up event on June 28th from 12pm-3pm. Come by & and meet the Henry siblings and see their new collection of traditional Virgin Islands market baskets and other craft items.
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The Henry siblings carry on a tradition of basket-making that was passed down to them by their aunt, Eileen Henry-Huggins.
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The siblings each add their own modern flair to their baskets through the use of different wood types in the basket handles, and by including unique splashes of color in their basket designs.

20/06/2024

We are so excited about La Vaughn Belle’s upcoming visit to St. John! We are so proud of her many accomplishments at home & abroad. She has been such an amazing artist & colleague for decades now and her artistic growth has been a joy to watch. Her recent video work is ethereal, poignant and beautiful. The way she narrates her moving images is poetic, evocative and a must see this Saturday!

Join us at 6pm on June 22nd in collaboration with the St. John Film Society and the Gri Gri Project as we welcome back St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle for a screening of her recent video works and a signing of the catalogue for ‘Being of Myth and Memory,’ the artist’s 2023-2024 exhibition at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in Frederiksted.

Part of the mission of the St. John Film Society is to present independent films that celebrate the human spirit with a focus on the Caribbean. There is a suggested donation of $5.

Video works to be screened at Bajo El Sol include ‘Por El Viento y La Curriente / Becoming Wind and Current,’ a poetic investigation of the history of marronage and its implications today commissioned by MAC en el Barrio, a program of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, in collaboration with COPI (Coorporación Piñones se Integra, Inc.). The screening will also include ‘Effluvia,’ a video commissioned by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art on the occasion of Belle’s solo exhibition in 2023. Shot in the marshes and swamps of South Carolina Belle traverses former rice plantations, sites of slave rebellions to explore what histories ooze from the earth and water.
Copies of the catalogue for ‘Being of Myth and Memory’ will be on sale at the screening. That exhibition curated by Erica Moiah James, PhD at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts included videos, sculptures, digital collages and paper collage paintings. James writes, “In the wake of catastrophic histories, La Vaughn Belle’s generative practice is activated by a belief that myth and memory are not only foundational to collective identity but are necessary for life. While memories tend to be tethered to an event that has been directly experienced, myths are negotiated, may have multiple versions and are capable of reinvention. They are open and continual discourses that are alive.”

La Vaughn Belle makes visible the unremembered. Through exploring the material culture of coloniality Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines her practice includes: painting, installation, photography, writing, video and public interventions. Her work with colonial era pottery led to a commission with the renowned brand of porcelain products, the Royal Copenhagen. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (NY), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (CA) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (SC) and the National Nordic Museum (WA). Her art is in the collections of the National Photography Museum and the Vestsjælland Museum in Denmark and the National Gallery of Art and the Virgina Fine Art Museum in the U.S. She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world including the NY Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axe and numerous journals and books.

Belle holds an MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba and an MA and BA from Columbia University in NY. She was a finalist for the She Built NYC project to develop a monument to memorialize the legacy of Shirley Chisholm and for the Inequality in Bronze project in Philadelphia to redesign one of the first monuments to an enslaved woman at the Stenton historic house museum. As a 2018-2020 fellow at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Research Center for Women at Columbia University she researched the citizenless Virgin Islanders in the Harlem Renaissance. She is a founding member of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective (VISCO). Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.

Bajo El Sol Gallery & Art Bar is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, as well as talks by local academics and visiting curators.

The Gri Gri Project’s mission is to create and support interpretive art exhibitions, artist-centered events, archives, and writing related to the cultural patrimony of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the broader Caribbean region.

The screening is supported by the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, & the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC.

18/06/2024

https://stcroixsource.com/2024/06/17/st-croix-artist-la-vaughn-belles-video-works-to-be-shown-at-bajo-el-sol-on-stj/

Bajo el Sol Gallery, in collaboration with the St. John Film Society and the Gri Gri Project, will welcome St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle for a screening of her recent video works on June 22 at 6 p.m. There will also be a signing of her catalog for "Being of Myth and Memory," the artist’s 2023-2...

10/06/2024

https://stjohnsource.com/2024/06/07/bajo-el-sol-to-open-exhibit-of-tangentleman-prophecies-on-june-15/

Artist Jon Euwema coined the word ‘Tangentleman’ to describe himself. According to him, a ‘tangentleman’ is a gentleman on a tangent

08/06/2024

On Saturday June 29, Bajo el Sol Gallery, the Gri Gri Project, and Love Alone will host a Rhyme and Lime event celebrating pride, love and liberation. The event will begin at 7 p.m. and attendees are encouraged to come in pride themed attire, and share works about love, pride, queerness, intersectionality, and liberation. This month’s Rhyme and Lime will also feature VI author and poet Tiphanie Yanique, and food prepared by Chef Angel.

The June Rhyme and Lime is typically held in honor of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month and as a collaboration with the St. Thomas Pride Month Planning Committee. The Committee recently reorganized into Love Alone, an organization that aims, “to promote a love ethic in community building within the Virgin Islands to advance equity and justice for marginalized and historically excluded communities”. Love Alone engages in advocacy, education, and community building for the benefit of people impacted by multiple systems of power including (but not limited to): colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, racism, heteronormativity, and ableism. At this months’ Rhyme and Lime, Love Alone hopes to create a space where historically excluded people can share in art, poetry, and community.

The featured poet Tiphanie Yanique is a highly lauded Virgin Islands author, poet, and a professor at Emory University. Her poetry book Wife received the 2016 Bocas Prize in Caribbean Poetry, and the United Kingdom’s 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection. Her novel The Land of Love and Drowning received the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award. It was also listed by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2014, and as a finalist for both the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Her latest novel Monster in the Middle released in 2021, and was named a most anticipated book of Fall 2021 by both Vulture and the New York Times. Tiphanie Yanique’s body of work is heavily influenced by her cultural upbringing, and explores themes of identity, place, community, and love.
Chef Angel, a Virgin Islands born, award winning vegan chef; a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, majoring in Occupational Science is returning to the Virgin Islands for a night, to continue his vision of changing the way the world views Caribbean cuisine. While abroad, Chef Angel joined various culinary competitions, among which Angel won the Kellogg`s Away From Home competition partnering with Southern Smoke Foundation. For 15 years in his career, Chef Angel`s focus has been Caribbean inspired cuisines, targeting ingredients, flavors and colors of the Virgin Islands. Get excited for a night of flavor, rum, rhymin, and limin where Chef Angel will be featuring a light tasting of what he has been working on lately.

To sign up to perform, you can contact the gallery at [email protected] or by calling 340-693-7070.

07/06/2024

Mark your calendars you don't want to miss this event!

Join us at 6pm on June 22nd in collaboration with the St. John Film Society and the Gri Gri Project as we welcome back St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle for a screening of her recent video works and a signing of the catalogue for ‘Being of Myth and Memory,’ the artist’s 2023-2024 exhibition at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in Frederiksted.

Part of the mission of the St. John Film Society is to present independent films that celebrate the human spirit with a focus on the Caribbean. There is a suggested donation of $5.

Video works to be screened at Bajo El Sol include ‘Por El Viento y La Curriente / Becoming Wind and Current,’ a poetic investigation of the history of marronage and its implications today commissioned by MAC en el Barrio, a program of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, in collaboration with COPI (Coorporación Piñones se Integra, Inc.). The screening will also include ‘Effluvia,’ a video commissioned by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art on the occasion of Belle’s solo exhibition in 2023. Shot in the marshes and swamps of South Carolina Belle traverses former rice plantations, sites of slave rebellions to explore what histories ooze from the earth and water.
Copies of the catalogue for ‘Being of Myth and Memory’ will be on sale at the screening. That exhibition curated by Erica Moiah James, PhD at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts included videos, sculptures, digital collages and paper collage paintings. James writes, “In the wake of catastrophic histories, La Vaughn Belle’s generative practice is activated by a belief that myth and memory are not only foundational to collective identity but are necessary for life. While memories tend to be tethered to an event that has been directly experienced, myths are negotiated, may have multiple versions and are capable of reinvention. They are open and continual discourses that are alive.”

La Vaughn Belle makes visible the unremembered. Through exploring the material culture of coloniality Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines her practice includes: painting, installation, photography, writing, video and public interventions. Her work with colonial era pottery led to a commission with the renowned brand of porcelain products, the Royal Copenhagen. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (NY), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (CA) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (SC) and the National Nordic Museum (WA). Her art is in the collections of the National Photography Museum and the Vestsjælland Museum in Denmark and the National Gallery of Art and the Virgina Fine Art Museum in the U.S. She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world including the NY Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axe and numerous journals and books.

Belle holds an MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba and an MA and BA from Columbia University in NY. She was a finalist for the She Built NYC project to develop a monument to memorialize the legacy of Shirley Chisholm and for the Inequality in Bronze project in Philadelphia to redesign one of the first monuments to an enslaved woman at the Stenton historic house museum. As a 2018-2020 fellow at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Research Center for Women at Columbia University she researched the citizenless Virgin Islanders in the Harlem Renaissance. She is a founding member of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective (VISCO). Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.

Bajo El Sol Gallery & Art Bar is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, as well as talks by local academics and visiting curators.

The Gri Gri Project’s mission is to create and support interpretive art exhibitions, artist-centered events, archives, and writing related to the cultural patrimony of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the broader Caribbean region.

The screening is supported by the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, & the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC.

04/06/2024

Overflowing with excitement about this exhibition. Make sure to bring your smart phone and or tablets for this interactive experience!

On Saturday, June 15th we will be opening the exhibition ‘Tangentleman Prophecies’ starting at 5pm at Bajo el Sol Gallery in Mongoose Junction, St. John.

In a 2015 article and interview in the Caribbean contemporary art publication ARC Magazine, St. Thomian artist Jon Euwema coined the word ‘Tangentleman’ to describe himself. According to Euwema, a ‘tangentleman’ – as in a gentleman on a tangent – follows an intensely digressive and sometimes tongue-in-cheek approach towards self-expression, following threads of association wherever they may lead with no fixed idea of final truths.

For the exhibition ‘Tangentleman Prophecies’ at Bajo El Sol Gallery, Euwema joins St. John’s William ‘Bill’ Stelzer - a fellow ‘tangentleman’ artist - for an interactive, multimedia melding of reimagined pasts and possible futures.

In true tangentleman form, Euwema describes his recent anthropomorphic assemblages, titled ‘Creatures from the Past’ as “true & true island non-binary time-encapsulated pieces.” Their construction mines artifacts and family heirlooms – some more than 175 years old - connected to Virgin Islands cultural and architectural heritage. “Components seem to find me and speak to me based on mood and the possibilities or limitations of the material,” Euwema says. “They make their way into the studio and are re-imagined and repurposed in compositions that transfix the materials as characters, totems and fetishes.” Objects used in the assemblages include historic building staples, West Indian shutter bars and holders, cowrie shells and even a pencil sharpener that belonged to Eudora Kean, Euwema’s family member for whom one of St. Thomas’s high schools is named.

Euwema’s ‘Creature from the Past’ are joined in the gallery by digitally-constructed glimpses into potential futures prophesized by Bill Stelzer. As an artist specializing in digital media, Stelzer has recently become fascinated with the possibilities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence. In his series of works on display at Bajo El Sol Gallery, Stelzer has combined man-made digital art with renderings by artificial intelligence to imagine new deities and supernatural beings that will guide humanity’s new relationship with A.I. Stelzer has also incorporated immersive technology into these works with which viewers can use their smart phones to be further drawn into dimensions beyond what is visible without technology.

Stelzer says, “This is a somewhat whimsical, somewhat nerve-wracking, glimpse into the future of Artificial Intelligence, using A.I. generated imagery and Augmented Reality to tell the story of a new pantheon of gods poised to now endow machines and technology with the skills and knowledge they had once gifted to us.”

Jon Euwema is a St. Thomian architect/designer, visual artist and poet who comes from a long family line of Virgin Islands artists. His works often present a critical vision of island society skewed and refracted by an irreverent sense of humor. He was one of several V.I. visual artists included in a presentation given on Virgin Islands contemporary art at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba in 2015, and he returned again to Havana in 2017 for the group show “My Islands Do Not Make a Nation.” Euwema describes his creative process as a strategy for finding freedom from established power structures and institutional authority. His assemblages and site-specific installations frequently deal with Pan-African motivations, rhizomatic cultural networks, and transatlantic collective memory.

Bill Stelzer is a freelance artist/filmmaker specializing in digital media. He has worked on a wide array of documentary and commercial projects in the Virgin Islands. Prior to living in the Virgin Islands he worked as graphics director for the ABC-TV affiliate in Central Texas and as a special effects director using computer and model animation for accident reconstructions. He was also part of a research expedition into the Venezuelan Amazon to study burial cave artwork, shot documentary footage on a Peruvian glacier, and produced mini documentaries in Haiti, Nicaragua, St. John and Florida. He has shown his work at venues that include the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He teaches classes in photography at the St. John School of the Arts.

Located at Mongoose Junction on St. John, Bajo El Sol Gallery, & Art Bar is a hybrid art gallery, bookstore, café, rum and cocktail bar. As a gallery and events space, Bajo El Sol is dedicated to offering the best in Virgin Islands fine art and cultural expression.

03/06/2024

More exciting events in June at Bajo el Sol Gallery!

30/05/2024

Happening this Saturday, June 1st. 2024!

https://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/island_life/first-screening-of-virgin-islands-animated-film-irmaria/article_b111563f-18db-55da-927b-079b19166f42.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0nTaHg2S70c-4BgP9C2i5dg_OrNQzfjGFFbAKUM1dH0sqQ3VzuW5UTr9o_aem_AY_vyDakwbR03xplsNobQSCzyFjRVpor6tnt1VeTz2g-Qfky9qLSEvMwJACXEhoec79lAC1PCYoss9R-r3Xy3BgD

The short film “IrMaria,” an animated project created by Virgin Islands artists Aariyah Athanase and Christopher Lawrence, will be screening at 6 p.m. Saturday at Bajo el Sol Gallery on

28/05/2024

I'm looking forward to this film screening! On Saturday, June 1, 2024, at 6 p.m. Bajo el Sol Gallery, the Gri Gri Project, and the St. John Film Society will host a screening for the short film IrMaria. The film is an animated project created by Virgin Islands artists Aariyah Athanase and Christopher Lawrence. The duo will be present for the screening and a Q&A session afterwards. There is a suggested donation of $5.

Part of the mission of the St. John Film Society is to present independent films that celebrate the human spirit with a focus on the Caribbean. Irmaria is a short animated film set in the Virgin Islands, and it follows the story of mother-daughter duo Kierra and Mia as they are faced by the world’s most powerful hurricane. The film was completed in 2019, and will be screened for the first time in the Territory.

Director and co-creator of the film Christopher Lawrence is a 3D animator from St. Thomas. Lawrence has a Bachelor’s degree in animation from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He has worked with companies such as Barnstormer Media and Black Sands Studios. “I come from a family of artists, so naturally I grew up always loving art. It is a practice that allowed me to express myself in ways that others could not,” said Lawrence. “As a Virgin Island artist, it delights me in knowing I have the ability to share a fresh perspective. Directing the short film IrMaria allowed me to spread awareness, not only about the devastating effects of hurricanes, but also the resilience and courage of the Virgin Island people.”

Co-creator Aariyah Athanase is a native St. Johnian who discovered her artistic spark and love for storytelling at a young age by listening to the colorful stories and folktales shared by her family. This fascination with stories led her to pursue higher education at SCAD, where she explored a variety of mediums that worked well with traditional art background. During her time at SCAD, Aariyah's artistic journey took a digital turn, expanding her horizons to embrace the potential of digital art and video production. After acquiring a Bachelor’s in animation, Athanase returned to the Territory to use her talents to illuminate the rich history and culture of the Virgin Islands, a place that had shaped her identity and inspired her art.

Bajo El Sol Gallery & Art Bar is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, as well as talks by local academics and visiting curators.

The Gri Gri Project’s mission is to create and support interpretive art exhibitions, artist-centered events, archives, and writing related to the cultural patrimony of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the broader Caribbean region.

The screening is supported by the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, & the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC.

Attached Pictures: Irmaria Film Poster, Aariyah Athanase & Christopher Lawrence

25/05/2024

Today, Saturday May 25, Bajo el Sol Gallery in collaboration with the Gri Gri Project will host a mythical and faetastic Rhyme and Lime event. This month’s poetry jam themed A Fae and Folklore Affair, will begin at 7 p.m. and will feature themed cocktails, a performance from the house band From Broheem With Love, and specialty body painting by Chunikwa George of Auntiii Art.

The fantasy genre has long been used as an expression of imagination, escape from reality, and even critique of the world we live in now by exploring the worlds we could be in. The genre often draws inspiration from myths and tales all around the world. The Caribbean is no stranger to tales of the fantastic. It is home to a vibrant and magical people, all with an eclectic shared history carried through music, shared stories, art, and other folkways. Along with the long standing oral traditions and myths about spirits and Jumbies, the Virgin Islands boasts a plethora of fantasy and YA fantasy authors such as Cadwell Turnbull, Kacen Callender, Melissa Fredericks, Howard O.A. Jones, Celeste Rita Baker, and more. These authors use both place and Caribbean identity to build upon the traditions of fantasy storytelling.

Though an appreciation of the otherworldly can be found across a wide array of cultures, the fantasy genre has struggled to depict this diversity in the mainstream. Attempts to include more Black, indigenous, and multicultural representation is often met with backlash. Alongside other worldwide efforts to highlight more diverse portrayals of culture and identity in fantasy spaces, this month our Rhyme and Lime is A Fae and Folklore Affair. Fantasy and folklore themed works and cosplay are encouraged, and Chunikwa George of Auntiii Art will be in attendance offering fae and folklore themed body painting.

To sign up to perform, you can contact the gallery at [email protected] or by calling 340-693-7070.

Bajo El Sol Gallery in Mongoose Junction, St. John is home to thought-provoking monthly exhibitions, readings by award winning V.I. writers & poets, documentary screenings on some of the Caribbean’s most respected thinkers, as well as talks by local academics and visiting curators.


Bajo El Sol Gallery is also home of the non-profit, Gri Gri Project. The Gri Gri Project’s mission is the creation of interpretive exhibitions, critical and creative writing, and archives related to the cultural patrimony of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the broader Caribbean region.