Guests discover mixed-media installations in the course of the Indo-Caribbean Arts Exhibition within the Bronx, a part of the Oyate Group’s Caribbean Arts Collection, which spotlights cultural identification and expression.
Photograph courtesy Oyate Group/Natisha Singh
The anti-poverty nonprofit Oyate Group is increasing its mission from pandemic reduction to cultural preservation with its Caribbean Arts Collection. This initiative lately hosted its second annual Indo-Caribbean Arts Exhibition within the Bronx.
Themed Indentured Survival 2025: “Current Currents,” the multidisciplinary showcase introduced collectively 17 artists in visible artwork, literature, movie, and spoken phrase to spotlight the complexity of Indo-Caribbean identification. Timed to coincide with Indian Arrival Day, the occasion underscored the Oyate Group’s rising function in mixing social service with cultural expression.
“We transitioned from COVID assist to our bread and butter — youth and group improvement,” stated Jason Autar, chief working officer of the Oyate Group. “That now contains all the things from small enterprise grants and seed funding to internships for undocumented people.”
Based in the course of the pandemic, Oyate Group initially vaccinated over 40,000 residents in New York Metropolis public housing. In the present day, its expanded programming contains Neighborhood Capital, which supplies as much as $50,000 in seed funding for entrepreneurs, and a Grubhub partnership providing $10,000 grants to native eating places.
The Indo-Caribbean exhibition, held in a packed Bronx venue in Might, was curated by artist and educator Raqeebah Zaman and grew from her experiences navigating cultural invisibility.
“Rising up as a Muslim Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean particular person, I usually felt that identification was excluded or not acknowledged,” Zaman stated. “Folks didn’t perceive that you may be each Muslim and Caribbean.”
Zaman’s imaginative and prescient for “Present Currents“ was each historic and modern. It mirrored on colonialism, migration, and the inherited traumas of indentureship—themes hardly ever centered in mainstream arts programming.
“There are totally different religions, totally different mixtures of Indo-Caribbean individuals, and even inside these religions, totally different practices,“ she stated. “The exhibition was about honoring that multiplicity.”
Attar emphasised that the humanities play an important function in Oyate Group’s broader group affect technique.
“Typically the humanities usually are not valued as they need to be,“ he stated. “This area permits us to make use of artwork as a medium to doc and validate the Indo-Caribbean expertise.”
The exhibition featured movie screenings, spoken phrase performances, poetry readings, and mixed-media artwork, permitting for diverse entry factors into conversations about identification and belonging.
“Artwork speaks past coverage,“ Zaman added. “It reaches individuals emotionally — by visuals or sound — and creates connection in methods language can’t all the time obtain.”
The “Present Currents“ theme was additionally a response to what Zaman described as ongoing ways of division — racial, non secular, and socioeconomic — that proceed to have an effect on marginalized communities.
“Divide and conquer has been a technique for hundreds of years,“ she stated. “We’re attempting to make sure we don’t flip towards each other. The Caribbean has led in range, however there’s nonetheless work to be accomplished.”
The Bronx, with its rising Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean populations, supplied a becoming backdrop for these conversations.
The Indo-Caribbean Arts Exhibition marked the fifth occasion in Oyate Group’s Caribbean Arts Collection, which beforehand included literary occasions and movie screenings. Plans are underway to broaden the format past single-day occasions, with organizers seeking to safe bigger venues and longer exhibition timelines.
“We’re speaking about creating area with extra longevity,“ Zaman stated. “These exhibits shouldn’t be one-day-only experiences.”
She is already creating themes for future exhibitions, aiming to align them with ongoing political and social realities affecting the Indo-Caribbean diaspora.
“I need the themes to be related to what our group is going through now — whether or not it’s round immigration, race, or world politics,“ she stated.
As Oyate Group continues to assist youth management, entrepreneurship, and undocumented staff by scholarships and internships at establishments like NYU and Columbia Lecturers School, its cultural programming highlights a robust fact: group improvement contains cultural affirmation.
“The Indo-Caribbean exhibition isn’t nearly artwork,“ Attar stated. “It’s about fairness. It’s about giving area to voices which have lengthy been unheard.”
Zaman agrees. “It’s about collective therapeutic,“ she stated. “And I’m all the time curious — after we give artists area, what can we create collectively?”
