MANGROVE

2023

Charcoal, Graphite, Paint & Hand-Dyed Cotton Installation 

10ft x 20ft room 

 

Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial 2023  

Cotton Exchange Building, Liverpool U.K.

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Referencing the entangled forms of Mangroves this site specific mural explores the Caribbean Carnival’s relationship to space: claimed and embodied, geographic and ideological.

 

Like the mangroves of Trinidad, an enmeshed root system living on the fringes of land and sea, the Carnival has historically provided a place of refuge and stabilization for countless marginalised peoples. Now taking place in various countries across the world, including places which were once foreign and hostile lands, Carnival celebrations exist to resist myriad forms of racial injustice and institutionalized oppression; a space for people of the Caribbean diaspora to assert their right to joy, self-articulation, agency, dignity, and ancestral legacy.

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This piece was transformed through performance at the mid point of its installation, an act which is intended to emphasize the ephemeral cycles present in the Carnival. It pays homage to the beauty and inevitable sense of loss which accompanies histories that exist in the performance realm.