Sprit, History, Mythmaking
I come from a place that has birthed orphans.
Beings disconnected from sanctuaries of support, from safe spaces that allow for the heart and mind to awaken, quicken, and bloom.
Dog skull and Indigo. Fort-de-France, Martinique.
Yet, I and others have not been orphaned.
We were Mothered, nurtured in ecologies that provided opportunities of thought, curiosity and relationality. We have been given a chance to see the transformative prowess of creativity and of will. Now in the sanctuary that is forming, evolving, I am able to see beyond the now, and to envision a future brimming with awakened community consciousness. A future filled with delight and spirit. It is from this place of generosity and curiosity that my creative practice was birthed. And, I want to tell you the story of the place that I see now.
Historically, the Anglophone and wider Caribbean region has been overshadowed; existing in cycles of canonical negation. My curatorial lens is nurtured by decolonial methodologies, which means that I am in search of finding new avenues and methods, breaking the myth of the monolithic, essentialist and continued diminution- the smalling of our small selves- within a region that birthed the largeness of Empire expansion, the ravages of modern capitalism and “New World”.
Sacred Vibes Apothecary, Brooklyn, New York. Owned and run by Empress Karen Rose, spiritualist of Guyanese heritage.
I oftentimes speak through storytelling, this provides a window to place a culture within an orality and tradition that sees history beyond the winds blowing in from Paradise. This history is ancestral, in fellowship with eggun and Spirit. Postcolonial theorist, Édouard Glissant’s work on relationality suggests a widening of approaches to how one considers the physical landscape and human-scape of the multicultural Caribbean. The region’s plantation history and its syncretism have allowed for the evolution of subterranean thought, a radical approach to transgression. We come from a space whose unique stories keep on informing the world about its philosophies, pleasures and consensus.
All of this work involves deep listening and a connection to spirit. My epistemology and outlook is supportive of a divine connection to Mother Earth, to environments and strategies that promote healing, resistance, revolution and reclamation of space, selfhood and nature. My writing and curatorial practice engages with these poetics in subversive and tangible ways, bringing to the fore linkages that speak to broader implications of being.
In this archipelago, a playground reveals itself not as black or white, but kaleidoscopic. We move into a garden of delights where tropes are not part of the checklist but rather, we are bearing witness to the emergence of states of being.
To theorise the multivocal and polyphonic Caribbean aesthetic is to welcome a range of senses and various ways of being; multiple dualities, binaries, perspectives and axes. It is a consciousness of self, surroundings and parallels that continue to reshape and evolve our traditions and societies. I am invested in contested histories, coloniality and how these have affected syncretic spiritual practices, ancestral technologies, forced erasure, indigeneity, Blackness, Womanhood and mythmaking.
Sacred gardens across Fort-de-France.
I have worked to re-cast and re-present the nuances of our imaginations, curiosity and ways of being in socially inquisitive ways. Elements of the sublime and supernatural exist in orbit of each other, connections between motherlands, hinterlands and offspring are nurtured rather than exhausted, exploited and extracted.
Like the landscapes and grounds on which we live and the seas that delineate our small islands, vulnerable nations, our imaginative geography bears a vital and vulnerable signature, a timestamp out of time, lineages twisted into roots and lumps, the polyrhythmic cacophony sending an alarm deep into the cartography of our existence.
In it, I stand present.
In it, I am ready to be at this virtual table.