In a year when American politics dominate headlines and international discourse grows more fractured by the day, 1-54 returns to New York City with a timely and tender shift in focus. At its new location, The Halo in Lower Manhattan, the contemporary African art fair carves out space to spotlight the Caribbean: a region whose layered histories, hybrid identities and diasporic connections offer potent reflections on global questions of belonging, power and cultural memory.

This year’s Caribbean Spotlight ‘Crossfigurations’ is curated by Atlantic Arthouse, a collective founded by Lisa Howie and Vanessa Selk in 2023 bringing together practitioners from across the Caribbean Mid-Atlantic. The group show features 11 artists and picks up where a previous exhibition ‘Sparkling Islands’ (curated by the late Caryl Ivrisse Crochemar) left off. Through multiple mediums, these voices reject simplistic notions of paradise in favour of more complex representations of Caribbean life — where beauty exists alongside political struggle, and where memory and identity remain in constant motion. And running alongside as a special project at the fair, Forgotten Lands present an Afro-Caribbean Resource Library acting as a literary installation inviting audiences to engage with the region’s radical thought traditions.

As a media partner for 1-54 New York, Nataal highlights four artists from ‘Crossfigurations’ whose practices – deeply personal, richly conceptual, and unapologetically Caribbean – are not to be missed.

Patricia Encarnación (Dominican Republic/USA)

Afro-Dominican artist Patricia Encarnación works at the intersection of decolonial aesthetics and diasporic memory. Through everyday objects, digital collage, ceramics and photography, Encarnación interrogates the imposed narratives that have shaped Dominican and Caribbean identity: particularly those rooted in colourism, sexism and class.

In her acclaimed series ‘El Negro Detrás de la Oreja’ (The Black Behind the Ear), Encarnación uses porcelain and photography to reclaim and reinterpret popular Dominican phrases in ways that centre Blackness and challenge lingering colonial biases. Likewise, in ‘I Am From Where You Vacation’, she takes aim at the tourism industry’s exotification of the Caribbean, juxtaposing surreal landscapes with sharp critiques of how Caribbean women of colour navigate life in a place often viewed only as paradise.

Currently based in New York and pursuing graduate studies at NYU, Encarnación brings a diasporic perspective that is as intimate as it is expansive. Her works are layered, coded, and quietly subversive, inviting audiences to consider whose narratives have long been prioritised, and what it means to reclaim them through art.

Mark Delmont (Haiti/Jamaica/USA)

For Miami-based textile artist Mark Delmont, discarded materials become monuments. Working with fabric, chicken wire and wood, Delmont constructs towering fibre sculptures that memorialise the labour and love woven through Caribbean diasporic life.

In his ongoing series ‘Blue Colla’ Blues’, Delmont renders familiar figures (mothers, workers, elders) as striking, oversized forms imbued with presence and grace. His work speaks to both celebration and critique, elevating the invisible labour of Black communities while questioning what histories mainstream narratives have chosen to forget.

Alongside this poem he wrote to accompany the work seen at 1-54, Delmont’s sculptures – tactile, bold, and deeply felt – transform the overlooked into the iconic.

We did it for you son
When did I ask to be responsible for this legacy
Your hands propel me but
hands that look just like your hands pull me down
Am i blessing or a sacrifice?
I’ll figure it out though
I know I’m here for a reason
I know I’m chosen

Mark Delmont

Danielle (Dede) Brown (The Bahamas)

Working across media from painting to sculpture, Danielle (Dede) Brown brings Bahamian narratives to life through figurative and emotionally charged compositions. An ongoing dialogue with her environment and heritage, her work experiments with found materials and layering techniques to draw connections between domestic space, gender and ecology. "Creating balance and weaving stories whether in a room or on canvas — that’s where my work comes alive," Brown says. Among Brown’s standout works is the mural ‘Full Fathom Five’. Inspired by Shakespeare yet deeply local in its references to Eleuthera’s pineapple farming heritage and marine life, it merges literary poetics with cultural memory.

“Exhibiting at 1-54 is a powerful milestone for me,” Brown shares. “The Caribbean Spotlight presented by Atlantic Arthouse is a space where diasporic voices are centred. I feel deeply seen and honoured to present work that reflects both personal memory and collective belonging.”

Steven H. Schmid (The Bahamas / Canada)

Interdisciplinary artist Steven H. Schmid brings wit and texture to complex questions of masculinity and cultural otherness. Working through painting, collage and assemblage, his practice samples from hip hop, personal memory and Caribbean visual languages to remix dominant narratives. Play and critique sit side by side as bold colours and unconventional materials become a playground for self-invention. Drawing on Bahamian cultural motifs while subverting traditional representations, his approach is both humorous and incisive in its insistance that identity is not only constructed, but constantly under revision.

“This body of work removes hierarchal structures, borders and barriers throughout the making process and proposes how sampling, collage and assemblage can guide us in creating more expansive representations of Bahamian and Caribbean bodies,” says Schmid. “For me to exhibit alongside several Caribbean artists builds on this practice and further, highlights how our distinctive histories, stories and methodologies can exist alongside each other and imagine a more intersectional and nuanced future.”