The National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) is pleased to announce the Green X Gold Symposium: Dialogues on Paradise, a thought-provoking, one-day event scheduled for Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 1:00 PM. As part of the programming for the Kingston Biennial 2024: Green X Gold exhibition, this symposium will feature artists, scholars, and the public for critical conversations on art, ecology, and national identity.
The first segment for the event will feature Professor Krista Thompson, acclaimed art historian and author of An Eye for the Tropics (2006)–a key inspiration for the exhibition concept. Prof. Thompson will deliver the keynote presentation which will delve into the content of her book, followed by a dialogue with NGJ Chief Curator O’Neil Lawrence. In the second segment attendees will hear from a selection of exhibiting artists in Green X Gold Deborah Anzinger, Oneika Russell, and Robin Farquharson, regarding the Biennial’s themes in conjunction with their artworks. The discussion will be moderated by Monique Barnett-Davidson, NGJ Senior Curator.
Curated by Ashley James, Ph.D. from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and O’Neil Lawrence from the NGJ, the Green X Gold exhibition confronts Jamaica’s image as a tropical paradise while also examining the complexities of land, environment, and socio-cultural narratives. The accompanying symposium will further unpack these themes through presentations, panel discussions, and interactive Q&A sessions.
About the Speakers
Krista Thompson is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art History (currently on leave, 2024–2025) at Northwestern University, with affiliations in Black Studies and Performance Studies. She specializes in modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the African diaspora and the Caribbean, with a focus on photography and lens-based media. Her acclaimed books include An Eye for the Tropics (Duke University Press, 2006), Developing Blackness (The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, 2008), and Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice (Duke University Press, 2015)–which has won several major awards. Thompson has also edited and co-edited key volumes on Caribbean art and performance. Her research–supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, and the Warhol Foundation–explores themes such as shine, photographic absence, and Afrotropes. In 2023, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the David C. Driskell Prize. Her forthcoming books include Refracting Light and The Evidence of Things Not Captured, which continue her investigations into diasporic visual cultures and archival recovery.
Deborah M. Carroll Anzinger, PhD (b. 1978, Kingston, Jamaica), is an award-winning artist and founder of New Local Space (NLS), a nonprofit visual art initiative in Kingston. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as the 35th São Paulo Biennial, ICA Philadelphia, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the National Gallery of Jamaica. She has received prestigious fellowships and grants from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Open Society Foundations, MacDowell, and Denniston Hill, and was nominated for the High Line Plinth in 2023. Her work is featured in the monograph Deborah Anzinger: An Unlikely Birth and in publications including Small Axe, Caribbean Quarterly, Bomb Magazine, and Art Papers. She currently serves on the international advisory board of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development.
Robin Farquharson is a Jamaican photographer known for documenting the disappearing traditions of rural Jamaica. Born in Black River in 1944, he began photography while working at the Museum of Antiquities, Ife, Nigeria. He studied at McGill University prior to transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design, earning awards in painting and film. In 1968, he photographed the Nigeria–Biafra civil war for UNICEF. Returning to Jamaica in 1970, he began capturing everyday island life, inspired by 19th-century art and his father’s photography. His images preserve a vanishing Jamaica—cane fields, mule carts, stonebreakers—offering a poetic record of cultural memory.
Oneika Russell is a Jamaican visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans video, wall hangings, and works on paper. Her art interrogates notions of “paradise” as portrayed by tourism industries, exploring how Afro-based figurative imagery is commodified and shaped by trade, migration, and informal economies. Russell studied Painting at the Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts, Film and Media Art at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, and Interactive Media at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the 2022 Kingston Biennial, 2018 DAKAR Biennial, Americas Society, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. She has completed residencies in the U.S., Caribbean, and Asia, including at Residency Unlimited and Post-Museum Singapore. Russell lectures at the Edna Manley College and the Caribbean School of Architecture, and is the Founding Director of Tide Rising Art Projects, a platform for collaborative cultural initiatives.
The NGJ invites artists, academics, and art enthusiasts to critically engage with this intersection of art and scholarship as we explore the themes of paradise, place, and the environment.
Admission is free and open to the public.