The Cost of Unprotected Culture
- Hezron Henry
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
“Where are the local artists?”, This question is not simply about visibility. It’s about structure and law. And more precisely, it is about whether Turks and Caicos has fully come to terms with what it means to exist within the global framework of intellectual property while still failing to execute it locally. The absence of local artists in major developments is not an accident of taste. It is the predictable outcome of a system that recognizes rights in theory but struggles to enforce them in practice.
When culture is reduced to atmosphere, the people who produce it are reduced to suppliers as with the business license structure and how cultural creators are categorized as retail entities which further support this framework. Their work becomes interchangeable with references and motifs. Their intellectual property becomes negotiable.
At the centre of this is the Berne Convention (1886) for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Protection..But, Not Really
On paper, Turks and Caicos benefits from international copyright protections through its constitutional relationship with the UK. The Berne Convention guarantees that creators (authors, musicians, painters, photographers, sculptors, filmmakers etc). automatically own rights to their work without formal registration, that sounds modern.
But the reality is; the only operative copyright framework materially available to artists in Turks and Caicos remains the Copyright Act 1911. A law written for a different century, drafted before digital reproduction and predates the very economy that uses art as a commercial asset. So while the convention exists as an international standard, the local mechanism through which an artist must assert and defend their rights is effectively anchored in the 1911 act, while the Brene convention was revised in 1971.
Regional Contrast
Countries such as Bermuda and The Bahamas have moved beyond inherited frameworks and enacted modern copyright legislation that gives real effect to the Berne Convention within their domestic systems. They have updated copyright laws aligned with contemporary use, enacted clearer enforcement pathways, provided legal recognition of digital and commercial reproduction and have systems that better position artists within the economic structure.
In other words, they have translated the Convention from principle into practice.
The Berene Convention
The Berne Convention establishes three core principles:
automatic protection
national treatment
minimum standards for rights
But none of these principles enforce themselves. They require local systems to give them force, what exists is not a functioning copyright ecosystem. It is a legal inheritance.
There is:
no modern, locally tailored copyright regime
no structured licensing or royalty collection systems
limited institutional pathways for enforcement
and a heavy reliance on outdated legal provisions to address contemporary commercial use
In this context, the Convention becomes theoretical; while artists are left to operate within a system that has not caught up.
A Cultural Economy Being Built on Outdated Law
Turks and Caicos is not lacking in the arts. It is lacking in legal infrastructure that treats art as an economic asset in real time. The reliance on the 1911 Copyright Act produces a specific set of conditions:
reproduction rights are often misunderstood or ignored
commercial use of artwork in marketing exists in a grey zone until challenged
enforcement becomes expensive, slow, and reactive
artists must carry the burden of asserting rights that should already be structurally protected
So when developments ask for culture, what they are often engaging with is not a regulated market, but an unsecured one.
Tourism, Aesthetics, and Unregulated Value
The Turks and Caicos Islands sells an image of place. That image is not just beaches and water. It is culture, even if some persons may not agree, it is identity and visual language.
Arts sit inside this concept with a contradiction: culture is used to increase property value, brand identity, and global appeal. Yet the legal system governing that culture remains outdated and under-enforced. This creates an environme nt where art can be absorbed into commercial projects without clear frameworks, artists are treated as aesthetic contributors rather than rights holders and value flows outward without structured returns.
Not because the Berne Convention allows it, but because the local system fails to prevent it.
The Berne Convention assumes a baseline: that authorship will be respected. But in jurisdictions where: legal literacy is uneven, enforcement mechanisms are weak and power imbalances are significant, that assumption collapses. What remains is a gap between what the law says could be possible (by extension as a UK terittory) and what artists can realistically enforce. That gap is filled by the continued reliance on a 1911 statute to manage 21st-century commercial realities.
Artists’ Rights
The conversation cannot stop at inclusion. It must move to ownership and enforcement. If Turks and Caicos is serious and wishes to further expand its economic sectors via the creative economy; its reliance on the Copyright Act 1911 is no longer sufficient. A modern legal framework is required to address digital use, marketing reproduction, and commercial exploitation of work.
Institutional Development
Systems must exist to support licensing, rights management, and dispute resolution that are accessible to local artists.
Developer Responsibility
Cultural due diligence must become standard practice. Intellectual property cannot remain an afterthought in projects that rely on cultural branding.
Repositioning the Artist
Artists must be recognised not as optional additions, but as rights holders whose work carries enforceable economic value.
To support local culture is not to decorate with it. It is to protect it, regulate it, and ensure that those who produce it participate in the value it generates. Right now, Turks and Caicos exists in a contradiction that anchors it to a 1911 legal framework without significant revision. Until that is resolved, the system will continue to produce the same outcome and so the question is no longer just: “Where are the local artists?” but;
“What legal system has been built for artists to stand on?”
Because without that system, the Berne Convention remains what it currently is in Turks and Caicos: A principle without power.
Turks and Caicos Islands' artist Hezron Henry's work is an exploration of this concept, via his practice. His body of work consists of oil stick, oil pastel and acrylic on paper, canvas, and digital painting, adapting both traditional and modern painting mediums to his signature style.