ocean journeys

How have ships and ocean journeys played a role in Caribbean history?

The colonisation of the Caribbean and the Americas, the violent transference of peoples, crafted exchanges of cultures, ideas, languages and stories. A culmination of events that lead to the formation of diaspora nations.

How were these people affected? What knowledge did they leave and what did they bring? What was able to survive once it crossed over the Atlantic? What was forever lost? How many loved ones were ripped away? How did they continue to be who were despite forceful erasure of their identities?

How do descendants of the diaspora relate to the ocean now? Does it create boundaries? Does it keep them isolated? How are collective histories of the islands passed on when they remain separated to each other?

This piece represents all that was lost, shared and exchanged during the enslavement and colonisation of the Caribbean and surrounding areas.

I focused on the colour blue to simply represent the ocean, the deep vastness hidden behind a false exterior. If you look at the ocean from an arial point of view, it appears to be one flat colour but in reality it contains so much life, so many unknown creatures and stories.

I included the Dutch wax print and the madras print as they are both textile designs that came about during colonial rule, they travelled across continents, and touched many hands to become the prints they are today, much like the Afro and Asian diaspora in the Caribbean.

“The ocean image, in turn, is closely linked with that of the ship “in motion across the spaces between Europe, America, Africa, and the Caribbean.” A powerful symbol of black agency, the image of the ship illustrates the exchange of thoughts, concepts and cultural products as well as the various journeys of black intellectuals like W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. However, in its evocation of the slave vessel and the transatlantic slave trade, it is also a reminder of the traumatic experience of the Middle Passage, focusing our attention to the complex entanglement of racial slavery and Western modernity.”


Page 46, Transnational Black Dialogues, The Concept of the African Diaspora and the Notion of Difference
Markus Nehl

Rotterdam, 2020

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