By John Liang

The GAVLAK Palm Beach gallery in Florida, U.S.A. received an overwhelmingly positive response when it exhibited Afro-Caribbean artist Awilda Sterling and her “Unbound Rhythms” artwork.

Sterling is an acclaimed painter, performance artist and dancer who explores themes of identity, gender, diaspora, language and migration, challenging conventional notions of culture, national and gendered boundaries.

“Unbound Rhythms” is Sterling’s premier exhibition at a U.S. art gallery since April 15 and has been showcasing her new works, including, “…blindfolded,” her most ambitious and impactful work to date.

The Whitney Biennale 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept featured Sterling’s work “…blindfolded” that was created at the museum, on site. This work is part of an ongoing series of dance-drawings, fusing Afro-Caribbean dance, music, drawing and performance.

During the “…blindfolded” performance, Sterling blindfolded herself while listening to improvisational jazz, composed by Miguel Zenón, one of the most influential and innovative jazz musicians of his generation. Moving freely, she translated the music through her body into dance movements on the surface of the paper with sharp actions and a sense of playfulness.

Sterling’s dance-drawings resonate with life, visually expanding and exploding with different colors, lines, textures and depth. Marks of bright pastel extrude past the boundaries of the black construction paper onto the walls. The abstract choreography of pastels act as a kinetic record that utilizes the imaginary.

“In the moment, while making those images, I don’t have a sense of what I am doing, but I am enjoying grasping the concept,” Sterling says.

“Abstraction gives me that openness and that freedom; from there, I can go further, be riskier in how I work.”

Sterling’s

Sterling adds that she’s been forcing her brain “to push ideas for so long that I don’t need to see what I am doing. To me, this is what is most abstract. Precisely because this information is encapsulated in my body, I don’t have to see what I am building on. I just have to feel it first.”

Sterling’s experience as a woman of color and her AfroCaribbean upbringing in Puerto Rico work deeply informs her work. Improvisation and abstraction are key elements in her art. She does what feels honest, and centers herself in a vocabulary rooted in traditional Afro-Caribbean dances, cultures and religions. She aims to bring these traditions into a more contemporary focus.

Building from these traditional religious dances, Sterling creates a vocabulary of movement and gestures that translates to active abstraction filled with joy.

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“I was born in Palermo, and moved almost right away to Ethiopia. I spent the first six years of my life there. Then we went to Rome, then Palermo again and then back to Rome, then to Milan and to London. I feel the most important aspect of being a filmmaker is to be really aware of what forms you as much as what’s in front of you.”

By Dr. Paulette Bethel