Five Artworks Which Explore Caribbean-British Experience

To reflect their little acknowledged, diverse experiences, Caribbean-British artists must invent new modes of expression. This includes filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien who uses a range of techniques to portray diaspora identity.

Set at Notting Hill Carnival, Julien’s film Territories uses experimental forms to present 1980’s Black London. ​​Nyabinghi drum beats mingle with house rhythms. Images of Black youth overlay close-ups of the white police. The artist transforms the cinema screen into a looking-glass: a space where Black identity can be seen and race can be explored.

When Caribbean immigrants settled in 1950’s Britain, they brought their tropical music, languages and styles to the hostile motherland.

Jamaican-born photographer, Neil Kenlock was determined to photograph, in his words, the ‘strength and determination’ of the Black community. By documenting demonstrations, families, cane-rows and Rastafarian culture, he used his photography to combat stereotypes.

Look at the woman in this picture. Despite the financial hardship and racism of her times, she proudly sits in her front room. She wears a smart, tailored dress with coordinating accessories and immaculate make-up. Her hair is in its coiled, natural state: a symbol of defiant self-respect.

Within the photograph we can see a shining television, brimming cabinet, thriving plant collection and clashing, swirling prints of the carpet, wallpaper and curtains. Portraits featuring current fashions and symbols of status were often sent back home for relatives to admire.

Artist Michael McMillan has also depicted front rooms within his work. Here he describes specific trends of Caribbean décor:

Caribbean Britons could express their identities within safe spaces such as barbershops, sound-system dances and their abodes. Within the walls of these havens, we see their styles, aspirations and unforgettable homelands.

British Afro-Caribbean artist, Sonia Boyce creates varied images of African diaspora women by ‘deconstructing and reconstructing … the Black female body.’

In her self-portrait, She Ain’t Holding Them Up, She’s Holding On, Boyce gives space to Black female presence. Boyce’s muscular arms show her power and her fixed-gaze communicates resilience. The black roses printed on her pink dress are a play on the phrase, ‘English rose’. With her vivid blue dreadlocks, Boyce asserts that Black women are beautiful too. At the top of the image, a sliver of sea and sunshine represent her distant but unforgotten roots.

Fellow artist, Claudette Johnson notes:

Ignored by British memory, slavery haunts Caribbean-British art.

For photographer Ingrid Pollard, the Atlantic Ocean is a physical and meaningful space. Within Oceans Apart, the sea symbolises journeys: the Middle Passage navigated by slave ships and later, by Caribbean migrants of the Windrush era. For Pollard, bodies of water are also emblems of the imagination.

'Collective memory' is the shared knowledge and recollections of a particular group. Pollard taps into the Caribbean collective memory of the ocean which ebbs and flows through Caribbean art like waves. Suggesting freedom, birth, death and history, the ocean's meanings can be as fluid as water itself.

From streetstyle to the Black Power movement, photographer and filmmaker Horace Ové recorded the public and private lives of his community from the inside. By focussing on realism, his photographs offered an alternative narrative to mainstream media.

Ové’s film-making frequently blends drama and documentary. His film A Hole in Babylon tells the true story of a group of men who robbed an Italian restaurant to fund a Black history school. Although the newspapers deemed the criminals to be hooligans, Ové delved into their heritages and unpicked their motivations.

Yesterday’s Dream, Tomorrow’s Reality snapshots a political rally from the front line in 1970. A distinct divide is seen between the white, uniformed police officers and the myriad Black activists. Ové was crucial in chronicling defining moments and figures at the forefront of change.

Award-shortlisted writer and speaker, Jessica Wilson is the author of Sofia the Dreamer and Her Magical Afro.