Exhibition

Reflexion marked a major moment in Oliver Benoit’s artistic journey and in Grenada’s contemporary art landscape. Presented at the St Paul’s Community Centre, transformed for the occasion into The Gallery, the exhibition celebrated more than thirty years of Benoit’s abstract practice.

Curated by Susan Mains and Anne Labovitz, Reflexion was the first major public gallery presentation of Benoit’s work in Grenada. Bringing together early works, recent paintings and selections from the Whipping the Mind series, previously shown at the 56th Venice Biennale, the exhibition traced the evolution of an artist deeply engaged with abstraction, memory, landscape, identity and Caribbean cultural experience.

Benoit’s practice is characterised by layered colour, form, texture and emotional intensity. Across three decades, he has developed a distinctive visual language that moves between landscape and abstraction, material experiment and text-based inquiry. His work considers how Caribbean histories, social realities and personal memory can be held, fractured and reimagined through abstract form.

Curatorial Approach

The exhibition was organised around five thematic threads, mapping key phases in Benoit’s practice and inviting visitors to consider abstraction as a vehicle for both personal and collective memory.

Early works exploring Caribbean landscape and atmosphere were placed in dialogue with later works that examine the mind, social history and language through text-based abstraction. This movement between early and recent work allowed visitors to trace the philosophical, aesthetic and emotional shifts in Benoit’s career, while recognising his continued commitment to abstraction as a powerful mode of cultural expression.

Public Programme

A significant part of Reflexion was its associated programme of talks, panels and educational sessions. Twice-weekly discussions brought together artists, writers, scholars, musicians, critics and cultural practitioners from Grenada and the wider Caribbean.

The programme included:

• Dr Merle Collins — The Importance of the Arts in Caribbean Society
• Suelin Low Chew Tung — Art and the Grenada Revolution: The Impact of Billboards
• Michael Julien — The History and Use of Colour in Grenadian Aesthetics
• Atiba Benoit & Tiffany Strachan — Music and Art
• José Manuel Noceda — Caribbean Art at the Havana Biennial: How Can Grenada Qualify?
• Cecil Noel — The Art in Commancheros Mas’ Band Over the Past 50 Years
• Dr Adrian Augier — The Role of the Media in Reporting on the Visual Arts in the OECS: Is the Depth of Analysis Adequate?
• Dr Yvonne Weeks — The Role of Art in Education Over the Past 50 Years

These conversations placed Benoit’s work within wider debates around Caribbean aesthetics, visual culture, education, media, carnival, music, revolution and regional art histories. In doing so, Reflexion became more than a retrospective. It became a space for public dialogue about the role of art in Grenadian and Caribbean society.

Education and Engagement

The exhibition also welcomed local secondary schools, students, aspiring artists and community groups into The Gallery. Through workshops and educational sessions, visitors were invited to engage directly with Benoit’s creative process, from concept development and material selection to abstraction, display and preservation.

For young and emerging artists, the exhibition offered rare access to one of Grenada’s leading abstract painters and opened conversations about discipline, experimentation, interpretation and the role of artists within society.

Legacy

Reflexion affirmed Oliver Benoit’s place within Caribbean abstract art and created an important platform for dialogue around Grenada’s contemporary cultural life. It invited audiences to reconsider the possibilities of abstraction as a way of holding memory, history, identity and social experience.

The exhibition’s impact continues through the conversations it generated, the audiences it brought together and the renewed attention it placed on contemporary art in Grenada.