Palm Heights Grand Cayman Carnival Is Redefining Tradition

The Caribbean is renowned for its vibrant carnival traditions, reflecting its rich tapestry of African, South Asian, and Indigenous influences. These festivities, marked by elaborate masquerades and dynamic street performances, serve as powerful expressions of communal, individual, artistic, and spiritual identities. They have historically been tools of liberation and defiance, fostering a space where creative expression thrives. Still, the dynamism of an ever-changing world begs the question: ‘How is carnival evolving for contemporary audiences?’. 

The Palm Heights Grand Cayman Carnival is a prime example of this cultural hybridization, inviting participants to explore the convergence of diverse sounds, visual aesthetics, movements, and embodied practices. This event reimagines traditions for the contemporary era, offering a platform for a joyous and uninhibited union of the arts. Curated by Keshav Anand and Zoe Lukov, through the Open Palm residency program a wide array of creatives across a multitude of disciplines — visual artists, performers, designers, filmmakers, architects, writers, and chefs — who share a connection to the Caribbean are expanding on carnival traditions through a contemporary lens.

‘Our approach to curating the Open Palm residency programme has always been extraordinarily cross-disciplinary, as well as international. Carnival exemplifies this,’ explains Anand. ‘Forging a sense of community through music, dance, street theatre, fashion, food and revelry, Carnival in Cayman — not unlike similar celebrations across the region, and world — is an exciting moment of unfettered freedom and fantasy that punctuates each year.’

This year's theme, ‘Milk & Honey,’ promised an even more immersive and participatory experience. It's a large-scale public art and fashion spectacle, a festival of creation, desire, spiritual offering, and ancestral integration. Visual artists Naudline Pierre and Caitlin Cherry have designed carnival floats inspired by their painting and sculpture practices. Fashion designers Bianca Saunders, FEBEN, and Lafalaise Dion showcased their innovative creations. Musician Bree Runway, architects Limbo Accra, and DJ Young Wavy Fox contributed their talents, along with model Juliana Nalú and artist Bony Ramirez.

‘I felt it was important, both given the Cayman Islands diverse population, as well as the diverse influences that have poured into Carnival historically from across Africa, Europe, and the Americas, to work with artists from other parts of the world who might reference embodied practices across cultures and in so doing, create connections and ties to the Caribbean and specifically to the Cayman Islands,’ says Lukov. ‘The hope, of course, is that onlookers and festival participants encounter these contemporary artworks along the route, in the public sphere, in an interactive and an unexpected way and as such, may engage in a direct and dynamic way with contemporary art that is often still or pre-prescribed within the walls of an institution.’

The Palm Heights Grand Cayman Carnival is not just a celebration of cultural heritage but a vibrant, living testament to the power of artistic collaboration and community spirit. Join us in this spectacular convergence of creativity and tradition, and experience the magic of Carnival as it was meant to be—an uninhibited celebration of life and freedom.