Inspired by the murals of Carl Abrahams lining the departures lounge of Kingston Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport, Hurvin Anderson presents a new, sixteen-panel, monumental painting in his first solo show at Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Mining the space between abstraction and representation in painting, Anderson creates art that is at once steeped in history but also acutely contemporary. Born in Birmingham, England to Jamaican parents of the Windrush Generation, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, Anderson’s paintings are grounded in the universal spaces and visual archive of the landscape tradition so much a part of the history of modern western art. Yet, as is demonstrated here, he is also an explorer of what those histories mean in the African diaspora and, more specifically, within the cultural and social traditions of the Caribbean.

In 2022, Anderson participated in the Kingston Biennial. While working on that project, he traveled to and from Jamaica through Miami; coming face-to-face with the two murals Abrahams painted on Jamaican history for the airport in 1985. During this time, Abrahams’s murals began resonating with Anderson in a different way. Reflecting on the importance of Jamaican history, and the rich history of the Caribbean as a whole, Anderson began working on ideas for this show while taking these trips. Thinking of what these historical murals mean for immigration, but also as a point of entry and departure for tourism, Anderson developed this new sixteen-panel painting.