ANNALEE DAVIS – ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice revolves around issues of post-plantation economies by engaging with the landscape and the plantation as an economic model that shaped the Caribbean from the early 17th century.

The scientific process "phytoremediation" which refers to the capacity some plants have to absorb toxins from a toxic field and restore harmony, provides a conceptual structure for the work.

Walking the landscape and poring over family archives disrupts the notion of a single history with one set of coordinates. The emergence of a virtual apothecary of wild plants growing out of former sugarcane fields offers counterpoints to the plantation as a fixed site of trauma, violence and exclusivity allowing reconciliation with the land and the virtual slaughterhouse that lies below it.

The work considers the historical complexities of what sits beneath the soil, and composes other arrangements allowing for alternate utterances to emerge from these now grassy grounds.