STATEMENT/
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1981, my earliest memory is sitting in the hallway of
a different kind of house in a different kind of landscape, hot.
Caressing a doll with a red flannel hat, I waited, patiently…
A family holiday in 1998 was in itself a remarkable moment. It had been
seventeen years since I had visited Barbados with my mother and sister,
and now we were about to embark on the return journey once again.
Little did I know that during this visit we were to travel to Grazettes,
Barbados to meet Mrs Brown, my great-grandmother and matriarch of my dispersed
and splintered Caribbean family. I was not even aware of her existence or
the fact that this reunion would trigger a deep-rooted examination of my
roots and routes.
I am developing several themes in my work that focus on notions of this
entangled heritage including the domestic space, the legacy of
the island as an industrial site1, journals of travel
and love, and the language of tourism. I excavate archives
and personal narratives to expose the troubling and fragmented legacies
of British and European colonialism, which I re-position and re-imagine.
1 A description of the Caribbean islands by artist, Chris Cozier
during the lecture, Photography and The Caribbean Diaspora, Goldsmiths College
October 2006
