Martiniquan philosopher Edouard Glissant uses creolization to describe the historical process that thrust together human beings from different cultures, creating new societies with unequal power. He speaks about it as a continual process of negotiation and contestation. While interrogating the term creolization, I use oral history, family archives, and drawing as a suite of tools to embrace the ambiguity that many of us in post-colonial Barbados inhabit in our corporeal realities.
Our lives have continually slipped inside one another’s in ways that have had repercussions for the offspring of illicit liaisons. As I have mapped out the genealogies of my family history, the process of self-inquiry reveals the inadequacy of family trees, imperfect both because of their dishonesty and their insistence on charting bloodlines that revealed acceptable truths while other facts were disapproved of for moral or other reasons.
As if the Entanglements of Our Lives Did Not Matter is a suite of eight drawings acknowledging coming together of people that challenged the colonial project and showed that lines drawn by social mores weren’t impermeable. “Intimate” relations between men and women of different races and from different socio-economic backgrounds sometimes resulted in disregarded mixed-race offspring. White women’s wombs were policed to ensure the reproduction of white progeny and there were economic repercussions to those who crossed the line- poor white women who did not uphold the moral codes and who broke with white solidarity and interbred with non-white men were struck from the poor relief fund, for example.
These drawings challenge the silence and shame within practices of endogamy, bringing estranged ancestors together in new family portraits in an effort to recognise so-called “contaminated” progenitors. The Empire tried to ruin intimacy amongst different races and in so doing fostered madness by not allowing people to love freely.
Alongside the family portraits, are six drawings on ledger pages, grounding these images in the history of the plantation system. Roots combine with parasites and wild botanicals to offer healing including vermifuges, the treatment of wounds and heartache, among other ailments. Included in the collection are Vervain, Bread and Cheese, Common Sow thistle, Lady Palm, Paw-paw, sugar cane, and Wonder-of-the-world.
The stems of the bread and cheese (Paullinia cururu), often found growing in gullies, are used to weave baskets, testimony to the entangled nature of colonial interactions and an attempt to knit together family members who were not allowed to cohabit. The Lady Palm (Rhapsis excelsa) is considered to have hemostatic qualities–hemostasis is the first stage of wound healing, while the Common Sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) has been used to treat infections. Mixed race children in the early 20th century were considered ‘contaminated’ or infected from the impurity of being born to parents of different races or outside the confines of marriage. The leaves of the Vervain (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis) are rubbed directly on to the skin to treat fungal infections and in bush baths to heal wounds of the body or the heart. Wonder-of-the-world (Kalanchoe pinnata) is antiplasmodial meaning it is effective in countering parasites. Cuban essayist, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, likens Caribbean history to a long annelid parasite that has moved through the bowels of the region. Antioxidant properties in paw-paw leaves enhance the body’s immunity and the stalk of sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) references the monoculture of the plantation model and its brutal consequences.
