Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is a global survey that traces the circulation of forms, materials, and ideas from the 1990s to the present; positioning Caribbean art as a diasporic, fugitive phenomenon. Beginning during a decade marked by geopolitical transformation, the publication follows the movement of artists and their work across the Americas and Europe, foregrounding how identity and place are continually reconfigured through displacement, migration, and exchange.
The catalogue’s design references trade winds and oceanic currents: ecological forces that carry histories of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery, while also enabling the transmission of culture, language, and memory. The cover scatters the publication’s title; paragraph breaks in the book’s essays, roundtable conversation, and plate sections move inconsistently and organically, with each paragraph beginning where the previous one ends.
Movement is embedded throughout the book. Page numbers drift across spreads, and then back again; footnotes push and pull against the essay grid; and a two-part roundtable frames the book, beginning before the title page and extending beyond the copyright page. Materially, black surfaces—used in the binding cloth and on section dividers—reference electrical blackouts, signaling both rupture and resilience.
The dividers feature Sub-marine, a typeface drawn by Gerardo Ismael Madera in collaboration with Nat Pyper that recreates Caribbean poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite’s experimental “Sycorax Video Style.” Drawing upon early word processor–generated forms, Brathwaite’s visually distinct poems reference an “underwater” Caribbean unity; fractured, wave-like, and continuous across visible and invisible currents.
- Design Firm
- Studio Blue
- Creative Director, Studio Blue
- Cheryl Towler Weese
- Designer, Studio Blue
- Meredith Barone
- Former Designer, MCA Chicago
- Nat Pyper
- Publisher, DelMonico Books
- Mary DelMonico
- Editor and Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator, MCA Chicago
- Carla Acevedo-Yates
- Curatorial Assistant, MCA Chicago
- Iris Colburn
- Former Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow, MCA Chicago
- Isabel Casso
- Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow, MCA Chicago
- Nolan Jimbo
- Director of Content Strategy, MCA Chicago
- Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
- Editor, MCA Chicago
- Tyler Laminack
- Manager of Rights and Images, MCA Chicago
- Katie Levi
- Rights and Images Assistant, MCA Chicago
- Gabrielle Banks
- Production Director, DelMonico Books
- Karen Farquhar
- Copyeditor
- Matthew R. Christensen
- Color separations
- Professional Graphics, Rockford, Illinois
- Bradford typeface
- Laurenz Brunner for Lineto Type Foundry
- Sub-marine typeface (custom)
- Gerardo Ismael Madera in collaboration with Nat Pyper
