Caption: Home, from the series The Object of My Gaze
Chlorophilia : Artists : Marcia Michael
Caption: Home, from the series The Object of My Gaze
About the artwork
Returning to an area in St Mary's, Jamaica, West Indies that harbours more than just remnants of my mother's ancestry, the landscape living on its terms, allowed me the opportunity to gaze at is history and my own.
Allowing me to gaze upon journeys which revealed multiple passages of time, it was my presence in the land that my mother once belonged to that reminded me of the power that each leaf, root and trunk contained.
Power in ownership and power from the gaze, who gazes upon who? I found myself asking, do I gaze into a new world which begins after I have left, or, have I shifted the enquiry with my presence through this act, presenting a space that allows the land to gaze upon us.
About the artist
Marcia Michael's multidisciplinary practice centres on the reconstruction of the Black family archive. Michael injects current discourses that speak about the black presence in Britain with a Black feminist, intergenerational and decolonial visuality that pertain to the diasporic experience of her ancestors.
