This exhibition, HeArT-i-facts, includes the theme: the Past is Always Present and the series, House of Dreams, both of which have been ongoing in my work for decades. The work referencing the colonial period and Transfer came out of a long investigation into the major theme of migration and identity in the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean. The Transfer Project, initiated in 2001 with collaborators, Edgar Endress and Lori Lee, delves into the past through archived materials proving a rich resource for the images and stories that connect the past to the present.
In 2009 I produced the 8 min. 33 sec. video, Rock/Transfer in collaboration with William Stelzer for Facing Locality, an exhibition curated by Luis Camnitzer for the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in St. Croix. The rock was chosen as a symbol of the weight of this history, which is a burden to many because of the pain and shame it invokes. In the 8 years since then more dialog, movies, books and TV shows have brought attention to the remaining, unresolved issues of the colonial past which is dominated by slavery, sugar production and economic injustice. Video documentation of racially motivated homicides has brought the best and the worst of these dialogs front and center. The African American Museum on the Mall in Wash. DC is open and acknowledgement has come for the painful and shameful American history founded and funded by slave labor. We in the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean have a unique vantage point as the nature of slavery, sugar production and colonial life has never really been hidden...always, “hidden in plain sight.” In Teju Cole’s new book of essays, Known and Strange Things, he writes about visiting Alabama, the south, that James Baldwin references, and says, “ Long after history’s active moment, do places retain some charge of what they witnessed, what they endured?” As he walks the streets of Selma….that past comes into full view... “history”, Cole writes, “won’t let go of us. We’re pinned to it.” Our architecture, geography, pastoral life style and remove from the power centers that govern us make us independent and dependent at the same time. We are left to our own devices on these small dots in the sea but we have no status - in political terms we don’t exist. We aren’t really US and we are not island/nations.
The intention of this exhibition is to probe these questions through images and ideas that connect us to the past as we strive towards the future. There is not one viewpoint - the work presented here intends to cross currents in terms of perception and perspective; the content and the portent are subjective and intended to be subjective and personal as a way of cultural and personal investigation of the past - that which informs us on a cellular level while we pay lip service to the norm; daily life assumptions about why this is this and that is that, etc.
The transferred photographs on wood from the Transfer Project, are photographs of the diorama, created to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Transfer in 1992, housed at Fort Frederik Museum in St. Croix. In spite of the childlike, primitive quality of the diorama it manages to convey the passions of those whose future is at stake and is at best uncertain; once again. James Baldwin wrote, “People who imagine that history flatters them are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.“ Are we those people?
The House of Dreams series features archive and original photographs that have been transferred to found objects; the architectural detritus of the post colonial period. The sugar mills and forts remain standing as a reminder of the colonial era but the cottages and homes built by the ancestors of those who remained are rapidly vanishing from the landscape. These small hand built, vernacular houses that once dotted the landscape were the “House of Dreams” for those who held on and forged a future out of the rubble of abandonment and neglect of the post colonial years. The pride, craftsmanship, and love is still evident in these humble structures that stand as a testament to a way of life that nourishes the soul through memory.
The third series, Summer Solstice, features transferred photographic images of young Virgin Islanders as they interact with each other in the natural landscape which attracts a million tourists a year to “America’s Paradise”. The postcard images generally seen and sold are of pristine, uninhabited beaches and lush green landscapes. There are no people in these scenic promotional photos and postcards. Summer Solstice shows a different side of paradise, enjoyed by those who inherited this land by their “father’s hand” and who represent its future. The people who are ‘living the dream” on a daily basis...not on vacation, not on a temporary visit but those young people who must forge a future for themselves out of what has been defined commercially as “Paradise.” A place many can barely afford to live in let alone create a robust future in spite of the education this same land may have supported. Other work in this show deals with current issues and reflections on the past and where it will take us.