FUZE x TM Arthouse : Top 10 Works to Collect with Intention

Curated by Vanessa Selk | TM Arthouse x FUZE Caribbean Art Fair, The Bahamas

21.10 - 25.10 - Nassau, The Bahamas

Curatorial commentary by Vanessa Selk

October 23, 2026

Introduction and Curatorial Approach

What Does It Mean to Collect with Intention?

How does one curate a selection of artworks within the context of an art fair, with the intention of encouraging others to collect thoughtfully?

The fourth edition of FUZE Caribbean Art Fair offers an impressive breadth of artistic practices, bringing together internationally recognized artists such as Lavar Munroe, Renée Cox, April Bey, Deborah Jack, Blue Curry, Morel Doucet, and many more, alongside established Bahamian voices including Antonius Roberts, Heino Schmid, Steven Schmid, Lynn Parotti, Tessa Whitehead, Edrin Symonette to name only a few. Large-scale installations by Charles Campbell, Jason Bennett, and Dede Brown, among others, further demonstrate the fair’s artistic ambition, extending well beyond the conventional formats of the art market.

It is precisely within this rich artistic landscape that I chose to take a different curatorial direction. Though I am not an institutionally trained curator, my curatorial perspective has developed through years of researching Caribbean contemporary art, socio-political contexts, and literature, alongside my experience as an art advisor, collector, cultural practitioner, and occasional “non-profit gallerist”. While the traditional art world tends to separate these roles, I believe they are intrinsically interconnected. We are complex beings whose experiences, skills, and perspectives intersect and enrich one another.

These multiple engagements have shaped my understanding of the Tout-Monde, or Whole-World, where rhizomatic entanglements nourish one another rather than exclude.

Yet this particular exercise raised a question: How do I curate a selection that is neither intended for an institution, nor conceived for a private collection, nor guided by my own collecting preferences, but addressed instead to a wider anonymous audience I am inviting to consider an acquisition?

My choices would certainly have been different in each of these contexts.

Perhaps the answer is that I am not addressing an entirely anonymous audience, but those who care about diverse narratives, look beyond immediate aesthetics, and enjoy peeling back layers—or are comfortable leaving some of them untouched. Those willing to encounter different voices and perspectives without necessarily seeking to fully understand or possess them. In making this selection, I deliberately resisted the temptation to privilege already internationally recognized names. I could certainly have included established Caribbean artists whose reputations would immediately strengthen the visibility of the initiative—and, perhaps, reflect favorably on my own curatorial practice.

Curating and collecting with intention is not about borrowing the prestige of those who are already visible. It is about exercising one's judgment and using whatever platform one has to make others visible.

To collect with intention is also to recognize that acquiring an artwork is never an entirely isolated transaction. An acquisition establishes a relationship, however indirect, with an artist, a practice, a gallery, and the wider artistic and social ecosystem in which they operate. What difference can our acquisitions make at our own level?

Beyond the singularity of each work, three conversations naturally emerged from this selection.

1. Concealed Portraiture: Presence Without Exposure

At a time when Black figurative painting and frontal portraiture have enjoyed tremendous visibility in the international art market, I was particularly drawn to artists who approach representation differently: through turned backs, anonymous figures, intimate fragments, or objects that stand in for human presence.

In Philip (2024) by Melissa Alcena [TERN Gallery] and Finally Home (2026) by Junior Sealy, both subjects are presented from behind, refusing the conventional frontal encounter. While Alcena challenges expected representations of Caribbean people, Sealy's self-portraiture explores spiritual recognition through his experience of Rastafari.

Self-portraiture also takes unconventional forms in Liam Flannery's Shadow box figure (2026) [ARC Bermuda], where a solitary wooden figure shields itself from social alienation, and Delton Barrett's My Heart, My Mind, My Soul (2026) [TERN Gallery], which stages the heart, mind, and soul as interconnected forces of creative and divine purpose.

Portraiture becomes even more elusive through Yamilé Pardo Menéndez's Untitled, from the Hypnosis series (2026) [Bordón Studios], whose sculptural objects personify people close to the artist, and Elyse Ricketts's the things we leave with (2026) [ARMOVA Curatorial], where a carefully preserved lock of hair becomes an intimate suggestion of a person and a gesture of transformation.

Edel Bordón Mirabel's Charon's Boat (2026) [Bordón Studios] expands portraiture into the collective: countless anonymous bodies surrounding a golden vessel transform the tragedy of displacement into a powerful image of shared human destiny.

The unseen, the anonymous, and the partially concealed become alternative ways of encountering the human figure, allowing subjects to retain their opacity rather than surrendering entirely to our gaze.

2. Materiality, Patterns and Layers: Celebrating Complexity and the Unseen

Another fascinating dialogue unfolds through the diversity of materials, textures, and patterns: lace, feathers, carved wood, glass, beads, shells, steel, and intricate painted surfaces. Certain visual motifs seem to travel between artworks, establishing unexpected correspondences.

Feathers establish a particularly delicate dialogue between the works. In Eddion Whyms's A Little Further (2026) [ARMOVA Curatorial], white wings and veils suggest the threshold between visible and invisible worlds. In Victoria Ruiz's Guía (Guide) [ABIRAC Contemporary], feather-like sculptural garments, ritual necklaces, and cowrie shells connect the physical body to Afro-diasporic spiritual practices. Meanwhile, the translucent glass form in Yamilé Pardo Menéndez's sculpture recalls the delicacy of a feather, transforming an organic shape into something enigmatic.

The meticulously painted lace in Elyse Ricketts's work finds another intriguing echo in the wrought-metal gates of Emily Alice Mitchell's This Salmon Woman of San Fernando (2026) [DēpART]. Their intricate structures suggest different traditions of craftsmanship, while the gates may also recall the ironworking practices and histories of enclosure associated with the Caribbean's colonial and enslaved past. What appears ornamental can simultaneously suggest protection, restriction, and resistance.

The diamond-shaped pattern of the chair in Junior Sealy's Finally Home finds a visual resonance in the geometric structures of Melissa Alcena's blue photographic background. Seemingly secondary to the human figures, these patterns become active elements of the compositions, encouraging our gaze to move beyond the subjects themselves.

Elsewhere, the intricate needle-like pigment lines of Edel Bordón Mirabel and the handmade wooden construction of Liam Flannery further challenge distinctions between fine art, craft, adornment, and ritual objects. Patterns and materials are never merely decorative: they invite us to look beneath, behind, and across surfaces, embracing the complexity of what is revealed and what remains unseen.

3. The Many Faces of Coming Home

In response to FUZE's theme of Coming Home, several artists approach belonging through different, sometimes contradictory, experiences.

For Emily Alice Mitchell, whose grandmother left Trinidad for England in the late 1960s and never returned, the salmon swimming against the current becomes a metaphor for the enduring desire to return to one's origins. Her work asks what it means to inherit a home one may never have experienced firsthand.

Liam Flannery imagines Bermuda as a refuge from social exclusion, while Junior Sealy references home through known objects such as a chair and a shirt. Elyse Ricketts, conversely, explores the necessity of leaving something behind to embrace a new beginning.

Having returned to The Bahamas in 2016, Melissa Alcena reintroduces herself to her country through photography, challenging the visual narratives so often associated with Caribbean landscapes and their inhabitants.

In Edel Bordón Mirabel's monumental Charon's Boat, home becomes an uncertain destination for countless displaced figures, while Delton Barrett's My Heart, My Mind, My Soul suggests an inward alignment with oneself and the divine.

These perspectives resist any singular or strictly geographical definition of a Caribbean home. Home may be an inherited place, an imagined refuge, a spiritual recognition, or even something one must leave behind. Across the Caribbean and its diasporas, belonging is not necessarily rooted in one location, but may exist across distances, generations, and experiences.

Collecting as an Act of Commitment and Relation

To collect with intention is not simply to acquire what has already been recognized as valuable. It is to recognize value where others have not yet learned to look—and to turn that recognition into an act of commitment and relation. Through this selection, we invite collectors to consider how their acquisitions can contribute concretely to sustaining creative practices and expanding opportunities for Caribbean artists.

Collecting with intention also requires more time for reflection and examination. This is why the FUZE x TM Arthouse initiative offers time to acquire the works beyond the fair, until November 21st, to reflect on the works, and come back online.

The ten selected works reflect a remarkable diversity of forms, materials, and price points, ranging from approximately $650 to $20,000. From intimate photographs and sculptural objects to mixed-media compositions and monumental paintings, they offer opportunities for both first-time and seasoned collectors to engage with contemporary Caribbean art at different levels.

This is precisely the ambition of TM Arthouse: to encourage a more intentional, accessible, and engaged approach to collecting contemporary Caribbean art and design. We invite collectors to discover and acquire the selected works directly through tmarthouse.com, and welcome artists, galleries, and collectors to join our growing community—one in which collecting becomes not only an act of acquisition, but an opportunity to relate to one another and actively participate in the future of Caribbean artistic creation.

Final Note on Caribbean Representation

While celebrating the remarkable quality and diversity of this edition of FUZE, I also hope to see its regional representation continue to expand. Hispanic and LatinX Caribbean perspectives remain comparatively limited, while artists from the French Caribbean were notably absent from the presentations I encountered. These geographical and linguistic imbalances remind us that greater connections across the Caribbean remain necessary. This is a commitment we pursue through TM Arthouse. During the upcoming Miami Art Week, we will launch a new online collection placing a particular spotlight on artists from the French Caribbean, creating further opportunities for discovery and acquisition across the region and beyond.