Olivia McGilchrist, the artist chosen for this year's Davidoff Art Initiative

Being selected was a great feeling. I was just considering the residencies and then I was asked if I would like to be put forward—it’s great to be the lucky person selected. I always wanted to be part of Art Basel in some way so I guess you have to wish for things and sometimes they happen!

This is my first time in Hong Kong, in Asia in fact. I have never been this far East.

I started out working in photography and did a Masters in photography at LCC. Half way through my masters I started experimenting with video. Now I am more and more interested in interactive film and working with virtual reality.

Olivia McGilchrist, From Many Sides, October, 2015. Selected Still.

 There are several aspects to the work I am showing at the Davidoff Lounge. There will be a teaser for my actual video piece and then there’s a still of mine with an interactive element. I’m also presenting a virtual reality version of my teaser video. This is my third piece in virtual reality, I find it exciting.

There are definitely problems with making the medium saleable. It’s not as easy to value and display a video in a conventional art forum. I think that’s going to change a lot and I think a lot of institutions now are collect video, so that may influence private collectors.

Your piece focuses on an alter ego “Whitey.” It was about when I moved back to Jamaica and that sense of being so obviously white.  I’m an open-minded person and although I left to Europe at a young age, I was born there. However living there I was called “Whitey” a lot. At the beginning I thought it was offensive and then I realised that its just a way people deal with each other in Jamaica, it’s maybe shocking when you come from Europe its just, this is what you look like, we’ll call you that.

I identify as Caribbean-European. I no longer have any Caribbean relatives who are alive sadly but returning to Jamaica has given me a better idea of where I come from and my father’s heritage. I guess I identify as being somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic!

Olivia McGilchrist, From Many Sides, October, 2015. Selected Still.

Race became a key theme of my work when I moved back to Jamaica in 2011. I went to school in France and moved to amazing multicultural London when I was 20. And until then I had never seen myself in the mirror and questioned who I looked like. 

I always carry a camera. I always used to carry a small portable camera and also most of the time my big heavy camera. But now that the iphone camera has improved so much I often just have that. I also do more staged shoots and less documentary photography, so I carry my big camera less.

Olivia McGilchrist, From Many Sides, October, 2015. Selected Still.

 

Davidoff established the Davidoff Art Initiative in 2012, through which they sponsor young and mid career Caribbean artists to 5 Davidoff residencies around the world: Beijing, Berlin, Basel, Bogota and Brooklyn. Two years ago they built their own Davidoff residency in the Dominican Republic where they invite five international artists—young ad midcareer—to spend 3 months in a residency. The initiative also makes grants to help art infrastructure in the Caribbean, they organise inspirational talks and also commission artists to design products for them. We talk to Davidoff CEO Hans-Kristian Hoejsgaard about the company's relationship with the arts.

 Davidoff CEO Hand-Kristian Hoejsgaard

We focus on the Caribbean because all our tobacco is grown there. That is essentially where our home is. We have 4000 employees worldwide and 2,500 of those live and work in the Caribbean. I visit 3 or 4 times a year.

 I collect art.  I’m not a huge collector with a strategy; I just collect what I like. So it’s all contemporary art. I started out collecting from the COBRA movement but now I have a range—I bought some Chinese art in Hong Kong, some video art in Miami. I buy for pleasure rather than investment.

Olivia McGilchrist is very young and very talented. She has made a beautiful video and with her help we have managed to create 7000 stills from the film, which will then be printed on to cigar boxes. So each of the limited edition boxes will have a different image. It’s very cool!