How Exclusion Inspired Malene Barnett’s ‘Crafted Kinship,’ A Groundbreaking Book Celebrating Caribbean Makers

When Malene Barnett was eight years old, her third-grade art teacher forbade her from mixing paints to match the rich chocolate-brown skin tone of her infant cousin. Instead, she was instructed to depict her family using only “white people” hues—a formative moment of erasure that decades later fueled her mission to center Black and Caribbean voices in art. This ethos pulses through Barnett’s debut book, Crafted Kinship: Inside The Creative Practices of Contemporary Black Caribbean Makers, a visually stunning, deeply researched ode to over 60 contemporary artists and their interconnected legacies. Launched in collaboration with publisher Artisan Books, the book is both a corrective to historical silences and a rallying cry for cultural visibility.

From Canvas to Community: An Artist’s Evolution

At a stop on her book tour in Toronto’s ‘Little Jamaica,’ organized by local Black art organization BAND Gallery, Barnett shared the lived experiences that would inspire the book Crafted Kinship. This mirrored the diasporic resilience she documents. Born to a St. Vincent-born mother and Jamaican father, she grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, as “the only Black family in the neighborhood.” Her mother, a classical pianist turned educator, instilled an unshakable creative drive, while her grandmother—a St. Vincent dressmaker and real estate entrepreneur—modeled self-determination. “That entrepreneurial spirit is in my DNA,” Barnett explains.

Early artistic talent led Barnett to a specialized elementary school program, where her knack for portraiture clashed with Eurocentric limitations. “I couldn’t paint my family as they truly were,” she recalls. Yet these constraints sharpened her vision. High school teacher, Miss Coleman, became an art mentor to Barnett. Coleman, who was known to document her students’ projects with slides and champion their portfolios, helped to continue guiding Barnett along the path. After studying textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), she began building a thriving career in 2009, designing rugs for private and corporate clientele, yet felt creatively stifled. In 2017, a bout with burnout and desire to interpret her creative thoughts into her work, versus reinterpreting the thoughts of clients’ interior designers, led her to re-engaging with the more artistic side of her practice. This evolved into a passion for clay and ceramics, which Barnett dove into with the same zeal she does everything else. In 2020, she began her pursuit of an MFA at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, and it was here where she began interrogating Caribbean pottery’s ties to resistance.

The Birth of Crafted Kinship: “A Missing Part of the Conversation”

During her graduate studies, Barnett noticed a gap: while historians and curators dissected Caribbean art, the artists themselves rarely shaped the narrative. “I wanted a book that centered their voices, not just their finished work,” she says. In the Fall of 2020, Shoshana Gutmajer, a senior editor at publisher Artisan Books, approached Barnett about the potential of writing a book. She seized the opportunity, envisioning a resource that could be “for the community, by the community.” By 2022, she and photographer Alaric S. Campbell traveled the U.S. between Baltimore and New York, before traveling onward to Jamaica, to photograph the first group of makers from the Caribbean diaspora. This would only be the beginning, as a total 13 photographers across four continents would eventually lend original captures of the multiple artists included in the project. Longtime collaborator and friend, designer Karin Cho Myint, assisted with the book’s dynamic, colorful, aesthetic.

The result is a meticulously curated assemblage of painters, sculptors, textile artists, and ceramists from across the diaspora. Each profile—based on intimate interviews—explores themes like ancestral memory, material innovation, and kinship. Bahamian artist Anina Major, winner of the 2024 Pommery Prize At The Armory Show, employs the practice of straw weaving to reclaim ancestral knowledge and highlight its significance outside of a tourist’s colonial gaze. Jamaican fibre artist Katrina Coombs engages with natural fibers to explore women’s relationships to their bodies, specifically their wombs, and their experiences within and beyond the role of motherhood. Barnett’s own journey threads through the pages, particularly in her essay linking pre-emancipation pottery traditions to liberation. “These women used clay to nourish their communities and possibly buy their freedom,” she says. “That’s power.”

Design as Resistance: Intentionality in Every Detail

True to Barnett’s multidisciplinary ethos, Crafted Kinship is a visual manifesto. Drawing inspiration from her travels to Jamaica, Barnett and Myint selected a palette of cobalt blues, burnt oranges, and earthy greens that evoke the region’s landscapes. Typography also carries meaning: the bold, sans-serif titles use Afronaut, a font rooted in West African design, while body text employs Obvia, created by Afro-Brazilian designer Marconi Lima. Pronounced “Obeah” in English—a term for spiritual or magical practices in the Caribbean—the use of Lima’s fonts literally inscribes ancestral knowledge into the text. Perhaps most radical is Barnett’s decision to alphabetize contributors by first names. “We wanted to de-center colonial last names,” she explains. The book’s endnotes further personalize the experience, featuring dedications from each artist to mentors and ancestors. “Grandmothers were a throughline,” Barnett notes. “They’re our first teachers.”

Launching a Movement: “This Is Just the Beginning”

At the Miami book tour stop, Barnett witnessed an unexpected triumph: artists featured in Crafted Kinship—many meeting for the first time—embraced like long-lost kin. “They signed each other’s copies, exchanged ideas—it was electric,” she recalls. For Barnett, this spontaneous community-building is the book’s “superpower,” one she hopes will ripple into institutions. “Curators tell me they’re using it to rethink their collections,” she says. “That’s how we shift narratives.”

The launch also underscores Barnett’s evolution from designer to cultural archivist. Now based in Philadelphia, she’s developing a ceramic installation series inspired by Jamaican pottery traditions and plans further publications on Caribbean craft. “This book isn’t an endpoint,” she stresses. “It’s a spark.”

A Legacy of Visibility

For Barnett, Crafted Kinship is more than a career milestone—it’s a tribute to the grandmothers, teachers, and ancestors who carved space for her voice. It’s also a challenge to the art world: to see the Caribbean as more than just a backdrop for paradise, but also as a wellspring of innovation. “We’ve always been here,” she says. “Now we’re rewriting the story ourselves.”

In a world hungry for authentic representation, Barnett’s work reminds us that liberation begins with visibility—one brushstroke, one clay pot, one boldly told story at a time.

Crafted Kinship: Makers and Storytellers of the Caribbean Diaspora is available now through major booksellers.