Thinking On Contemporary Art In Developing Countries

The future and history are immediate, and we create both through our actions. In the present time and years to come, what we create now will either recommend or indict us.In a time such as this, when countries move closer together, through communication and understanding, enabled by advances in technology, it is an imperative that we know and understand who we are. For it is only through self-knowledge that we will be able to create a world in which we shall abide as individual peoples.This paper shall seek, in a very broad sense, to examine the role of artists in the developing world, and how what they create contribute to who they are and shall be. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section examines the phenomenon of the biennial and how this has been influenced by an imperialist western visual tradition. With an emphasis on Modem and Post Modem art movements the writer intends to offer suggestions as to how the biennial may retain the identity of individual nation states.The second section of this paper looks at current trends in the development of a modem Jamaican visual language, and how artists within the tradition of the Jamaican school intend to be seen or interpreted. A brief history of the island is presented so that the reader may come to understand the background against which contemporary Jamaican artists develop. But even more importantly, the writer intends to examine the hopes and aspirations of Jamaican artists in the 21st century.The final section of this thesis deals more specifically with the responsibility of artists in developing countries. It looks at the role of history and culture, politics and economics in this overall development, and cites specific examples. The writer then moves on to a conclusion, which continues to emphasize the role of individuality in the development of the artistic heritage of developing countries.It is my view that only when creative people come to understand the immediacy of the present and future will they seize upon an understanding of self in relation to others. For the way forward in contemporary visual traditions, in developing countries, can only be dictated by artists who create as an extension of that peculiar tradition. This calls for, above all else, the understanding of those traditions.The writer of this paper intends to weave into its composition an insight, through much afforded personal experience.