Oneika Russell is the 2018 Davidoff Art Initiative awardee. A multi media artist, Russell’s current work increasingly incorporates installation which uses sound, drawing video, prints, books and objects to reclaim and assemble fragmented experiences and thought together. An interest in hand-craft and technological meeting points in service of explorations of history, culture and social narratives have always informed her practice.
“I am also interested in how the crafting of cultural and national identity expresses itself in our visual culture and how we invite consumption of these identities. Through my practice I am in search of both quasi-scientific and highly subjective means of understanding the locations, cultures and history from which my identity emerges. Images produced for The Tourism Industry are examples of this. This work is specifically about looking at the ‘sweetness’ of images of ‘Paradise’ which I as the artist enjoy but am also conscious that are at odds with other realities and the dimensionality I experience as a native of one of these sites of ‘Paradise’. The combined and conflicting feelings of desirability and disgust experienced by the viewer of my work, the consumer of the Caribbean and those of us that live here are of key interests in my practice.”
For clips of video work please go here.
Russell has participated in many local and international exhibitions in countries such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Norway, Japan, US, Canada, UK and Germany. Her work has been featured in prestigious international events such as 2018 DAKAR Biennial, Senegal, The 2017 & 2014 Jamaica Biennial, Kingston and Jamaican Pulse, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK.
Solo Exhibitions include: 2008, In the Night Garden, Post-Museum, Little India, Singapore. 2006, Power, Myths & Tragedies: an exhibition of videos, drawings and objects, CAGE Gallery, Edna Manley College, Kingston. Selected Group Exhibitions include: 2017 Surface Traces, Yashar Gallery, New York. 2016, Remix en Caraïbe, Tropiques Atrium, Fort-de-France, Martinique; DIGITAL, The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston; Contributor to ‘Las Antilles para Los Antillanos’ Monica Rodriguez’s installation, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; Caribbean Linked IV, Ateliers ’89, Oranjestad, Aruba Jamaican Pulse, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK; Remix en Caraïbe, Tropiques Atrium, Fort-de-France, Martinique April, DIGITAL, The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica; Jamaica Routes, Galerie F15 Punkto, Oslo, Norway. 2015, Bi-Way Art Foundation, Wrong Biennial, online virtual exhibition March, Insides: Camille Chedda, Oneika Russell, Phillip Thomas, Prudence Lovell, NLS, Kingston, Jamaica En’ Mas: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean, Contemporary Arts Centre New Orleans, New Orleans, USA, (Collaboration on artists video with Charles Campbell).
Film festivals include: Her Shorts Women’s International Video Festival, Historic Y, Tucson, Arizona; Boulevard, Kingston, Jamaica April, Temporary Identities – Video Art event at Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Russia. March, Indiana International Video Art & Architecture Festival – Video Art & Architecture event at the Indiana University Art Gallery (USA).
Russell received The Commonwealth Arts & Crafts Award in 2007. She has done residencies at Post-Museum in Singapore, NLS in Kingston and Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont (USA). Since 2006 she teaches digital art and fine art courses at the Edna Manley College. From 2006 and 2016, she wrote and edited ART:Jamaica, a blog about the Jamaican contemporary Art scene. She is now working on a new arts initiative, Tide Rising Art Projects .
