The lore/lure of the Caribbean is a powerful one.

My work celebrates the captivating complexity of what it means to be Caribbean and, most specifically, Bahamian. For many, the region has been a space of intrigue, fantasy, and refuge. We’ve long been praised and promoted as picturesque destinations for reprieve. But there’s a difference between being known, and people knowing of you.

Holding reverence for the quotidian is a cornerstone of my life and artistic practice. Using personal and family photographic archives as source material, I give space to the reality of lived experiences in the tropics, as they exist within fabrications of paradise. Through collage, I layer familiar, paradisiacal visual understandings of the region with culturally specific materials, ecological imagery, moments of the mundane, trauma-processing, and surrealism. The resulting texturally dense images complicate the widely celebrated natural landscape of the Bahamas, highlighting that idyllic environments can hold a more visceral truth beyond the touristic gaze.

I articulate from a personal lens. I commonly operate within the realm of self-portraiture, seeing this modality as a vehicle for empathy, reclamation, and autonomy. My practice meditates on the difficulty in distinguishing between which experiences inform, rather than define, our sense of self. Through exploring this dialogical space, my practice serves as a reflective pathway to questioning our capacities for healing, cultivating, and nurturing individual and collective narratives and identities