“Their own kind of light”: Black diasporic consciousness in the Caribbean Artists Movement (1966–1972)

Established in London in 1966, the Caribbean Artists Movement founded by Eddie Kamau Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey, and John La Rose was dedicated to reformulating the social, historical, and cultural parameters of West Indian, or Pan-Caribbean identities. In the wake of decolonisation and self-rule of the former British West Indies, the group defined new literary and visual aesthetics and debated whether or not contemporary art practice had an obligation or the potential to mobilise or create social change. As with other collectives of Black diasporic artists in the sixties across the world, including the Spiral group and AfriCOBRA in the United States, the Zaria Rebels and the Mbari Club in Nigeria, and the Khartoum School in Sudan, the search for a decolonized and diasporic visual vocabulary became central to the development of these aesthetic propositions, which were examined through indigenous and diasporic forms of art and culture, and the tenets of American Black Power, Pan-African, and Pan-Caribbean anti-colonial and political consciousness. It was the globalizing mobility of diasporic thought that proved fundamental to the creation of anti-colonial aesthetics and new cultural forms around the world. This chapter contextualises the Caribbean Artists Movement within this moment of internationalizing and constellate Black diasporic consciousness.