Grants Town Trickster (2012-2014)
In the exhibit Grants Town Trickster, I champion the idea of the artist as trickster through a personal mythology that I create. Specifically, my work explores various stages of Joseph Cambell’s Monomyth, also known as The Hero’s Journey. I was born and grew up in the impoverished, stigmatized and oftentimes marginalized Grants Town community in Nassau Bahamas. I moved to the United States at age 21 and assimilated into American culture. My objective is to map my matriculation through various spheres within society whereby I tell a story of success through tracing a journey that begins in an impoverished state, both mentally and physically, ending in a place of enrichment. Both autobiographic and universal in nature, my intentions are to work through behaviors of the trickster as an embodiment of self and hero.
Much of my practice comprises research that is informed by critical investigation and theories surrounding mythology, literature, and folk archetypes. Through visual personification and allegory, I narrate and elaborate on real life events. Literature, documentaries, and real world conversations also fuels the work. Though framed in fictional narratives, my work explores and in many ways critiques real life situations that I have either personally experienced or encountered through research. Oftentimes I am reminded of the underlying darkness that reoccur in childhood fables – in a sense, drawing a parallel to the menacing motifs that occur in my work.