Interview by Adeline Gregoire, Curator HOT SUN Caribbean Contemporary Art, Arts Writer. For culture daze, May 2026

Azi JONES is a Jamaican Curator, Researcher and Art Advisor with a love for art and design and a keen interest in the way in which Art, like Design, are shaped by our region’s material intelligences, resourcefulness and cultural exchange. 

The vision for LEHWE, a curatorial platform founded by Azi Jones in 2024  “includes a me, a we and an us.” She explains “While I may pitch, propose or arrange, the nature of the work right now is all about collaboration and partnership”. 

Based between the USA, Jamaica and the Caribbean, Azi describes herself as nomadic – precisely the intention behind this new travelling exhibition BIRTH PAPERS: A Caribbean Design Show, which opened early May in Santurce, Puerto Rico. 

Santurce: the meet up place, a gathering of designers and their compelling works.

An exhibition meant to travel across Caribbean islands: like a maxi taxi, a minibus, a PH car… meeting the people – to take them home, or somewhere they need to be – at the maxi stands, arrets de bus*, de facto bus stop sheds which connect and define our landscapes…

Allyuh, LEHWE go!  

The exhibition foregrounds practices rooted in found, collected, and naturally sourced materials. These works resist singular narratives of origin, instead reflecting a Caribbean creativity shaped by environmental attunement and cultural multiplicity. 

We had the immense pleasure of sitting with Azi for a conversation on the shaping of things, beyond the good-bad binary: considerations of “beautiful” and “valuable” design, archives, island aesthetics… We also got down to unpacking the idea of Caribbean design, what it means to design “from here” and the vital gesture of shifting the gaze, re-naming and re-framing the centre …to see ourselves, to meet each other as Caribbean artists, designers, thinkers and makers.

BIRTH PAPERS: A Caribbean Design Show highlights the work of 15 artist-designers from over 10 Caribbean countries and the diaspora. Now on at the El Kilometro Gallery (PR) until 05 June 2026. 

*un arret de bus (fr): bus stop

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INTERVIEW

Installation View of BIRTH PAPERS

Adeline Gregoire:  Azi, can you remember the exact moment  when you realised that you needed to do an exhibition like this one: dedicated to Design from the Caribbean, and what did the genesis of the idea look and feel like?

Azi Jones: I think the desire was always there, but it became clearer through my experience working in a design gallery in New York (mid 2025). I was fascinated by how close design could feel to daily life—the desk I used to send emails at, the rack I hung my scarf on, even the toilet paper holder—and I kept thinking about how powerfully that way of relating to objects could speak to Caribbean life, memory and belonging.  But the urgency really came from hearing people say how impossible it all sounded: too many islands, too many shipping routes, too many artists, too many moving parts. 

The genesis of the exhibition was a combination of fascination and frustration, wanting to gather work from across the region and diaspora, and to create the conditions for audiences to encounter design in a context of its own.

“Our political, social and environmental realities have made creativity essential  to our survival, which is also deeply embedded in our ways of finding and feeling joy, of succeeding…”

Azi Jones

AG: This exhibition highlights Design as creative and artistic practice, with a focus on Designer – Artists from the Caribbean and our diaspora. Based on your curatorial practice and research for this show, could Caribbean designers think and/or design differently? Is there such a thing ? 

AJ: I feel like Caribbean people are some of the most ingenious and dedicated designers I’ve known. And we are not just the kind of designers one might define as smart or technically proficient, we are clever, resourceful—sometimes even mischievous. Our political, social, and environmental realities have made that kind of creativity essential to our survival, but also deeply embedded in our ways of finding and feeling joy, of succeeding, of making ends meet. My all time favorite phrase is, “Mek me try a ting.” 

While designers have dedicated their time, stories, minds, and research towards honing and creating works of art, they are merely reflecting what exists inside the cultures that have shaped them.

“Across the board, I think a lot about how Art and Design apply to everything:  from adaptive reuse, to infrastructure and civic space.” 

Azi Jones 

omo_ redeemer by Kamala Davis and FOR TINGS by Marlon Darbeau

AG: Could you share a bit about your curatorial vision for this exhibition, the works chosen and their relevance at this point in time? 

AJ: The curatorial vision for BIRTH PAPERS began with identity, but my larger goal was to show how deeply interconnected the Caribbean is as a region. I was interested in what happens when works from different islands, territories, languages, and diasporic positions are placed in direct conversation with one another. 

The title carries that tension: “birth papers” suggest proof, origin, and legitimacy, but also the formal and often restrictive barriers that shape Caribbean life, from geography and language to colonial history and logistics. The exhibition asks whether we have to define ourselves only through those inherited structures, or whether we can claim more autonomy by making visible the connections that already exist between us.

The exhibition insists on regional conversation as a form of cultural infrastructure. 

It reminds us that Caribbean identity is not only individual or national, but shared, relational, and constantly being made.

Plate Series, Simon Tatum

AG: Globally, our understanding and acceptance of what Art, “good-bad artworks” are and could be, continue to expand. This also applies to the world of Design and the works that designers imagine and create. What do you love most when it comes to Design and design works? 

AJ: What appeals to me most about design is its accessibility, especially in a Caribbean context. Design is often already close to us: chairs, lamps, tables, tiles, gates, vessels, textiles, and the other objects that shape daily life. These things may seem ordinary, but they hold so much information about how people live, adapt, remember, and create beauty from what is available.

Even when design becomes more conceptual, it can still remain deeply familiar through material. Wood, metal, ceramic, concrete, fabric, found objects, and natural fibers all create points of recognition. You may not know the language of the design world, but you know the feeling of a material, the use of an object, or the environment it comes from. 

For me, beautiful and valuable design carries that kind of intelligence. It does not have to be precious, expensive, or perfectly resolved. It can be resourceful, emotional, tactile, humorous, functional, or unresolved, as long as it reflects a way of thinking and being in the world.

AG: We’ve spoken about the idea of movement throughout the Caribbean region for this exhibition (2026 > Puerto Rico – USVI – Jamaica; 2027 > coming soon). Why is this necessary for you and by extension the audience, primarily based in the Caribbean? 

AJ: I think movement throughout the region is such an essential element of the show because it is something we, as Caribbean people, do not always get to do ourselves. It is rare to visit our neighbors, let alone those two, three, or four islands away.

I wanted BIRTH PAPERS to resist the idea that Caribbean exchange has to happen elsewhere first—through New York, London, Miami, or any other external center—before it can be understood as valuable.

For me, the exhibition’s itinerancy allows the work to gather meaning in each place it lands. Puerto Rico, the USVI, Jamaica, and future sites each bring their own histories, textures, and questions to the show.

I hope Caribbean audiences leave thinking about how much we already share, even across differences. The exhibition is not trying to flatten the region into one story, but to create space for recognition: the materials we know, the systems we navigate, and the objects that hold memory when official records fall short. Caribbean design is not peripheral; it is a language of movement, survival, imagination, and belonging.

Installation View of BIRTH PAPERS

AG: What were the major challenges and the most exciting parts of producing the show? 

AJ: The challenges themselves ended up being the most exciting part of the show. The setbacks forced me to get inventive with the logistics of how things came together, from shipping, to wall colour choices, to the work selection and the locations of the shows themselves. Though things are beautiful, like any good designer, all my choices had both an aesthetic and a functional purpose that aided in bringing the show to fruition. Interestingly enough, if I had gotten all my hopes and dreams for the show and its execution to happen as planned, any and all of the thrill associated with bringing a project of this scale together would have been non-existent. And even beyond that, I wouldn’t have pushed my own limits for what the show could be and where it could happen. 

AG: What does it really take to put on a show like this? 

AJ: Taking calls at the crack of dawn to accommodate time differences. Lots of cold emails and sometimes, unanswered ones. Embracing limitations and viewing setbacks as opportunities for creativity. Being a multi-hyphenate but also knowing when to rely on someone smarter than you or better than you at something. Supportive loved ones who will listen to you talk relentlessly about the same event for a year. Partners and artists who trust you and who you trust. 

A love and devout belief in the importance of your work. 

AG: What are your ultimate hopes for this exhibition? 

AJ: I want the show to create new fans of all these artists and art spaces. That is how I felt and still feel about each of them. I want people to search their names from our posts or from our presentations, and then find the work of a similar artist, creative space, or gallery, and then another, and another. I want us to keep finding and sharing in the celebration of our own and our neighbour’s stories and successes. 

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Participating Artists: Birth Papers: A Caribbean Design Show, May 2026 – ongoing

Clayton Rhule (Jamaica/Trinidad)

dach&zephir (Guadeloupe/Paris)

Emily Braswell & Jenna Rees (Puerto Rico/St. Croix/USA)

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan (Jamaica/Trinidad)

Kamala Davis (Jamaica) 

Kara Springer (Barbados/Canada)

Karlo Andrei-Ibarra (Puerto Rico)

Leonie Edmead (St. Kitts/U.K.)

Marlon Darbeau (Trinidad)

Sebastián Meltz-Collazo (Puerto Rico)

Shani Strand (Jamaica/USA)

Simon Tatum (Cayman Islands)

Suzanna Missenberger (Jamaica)

Yiyo Tirado-Rivera (Puerto Rico)

 Zoé Pheron (Guadeloupe). 

This project is generously supported by The Martin A. Dale ’53 Fund at Princeton University, and through partnerships with El Kilómetro and 81CArts.  

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Biography 

Azi Jones is a curator, researcher, and arts professional from Kingston, Jamaica whose work centers Caribbean art, design, and cultural production. She is the founder of LEHWE, a curatorial platform dedicated to Caribbean design, material culture, and creative practice. Her broader work spans galleries, museums, and arts organizations across the region and beyond, including TERN Gallery, Forgotten Lands, the National Gallery of Jamaica and the Barbados Museum. Through her curatorial, advisory, and research-based work, she is committed to expanding visibility and long-term support for Caribbean artists, designers and creative economies that shape and support them.