Rendering History Visible

Amidst all the talk about slavery being over, Christina Leslie’s work offers and important reminder that the aftermath of slavery; its profits, its ideologies, its practices, continue in a way that we are not meant to see. Her work renders this history visible and makes the links for us. We see how rum and sugarcane were used as commodities exploited from all around the Caribbean. We are reminded about the practice of boiling slaves in sugar as punishment. This is an interesting practice to think through as we tease the contradiction: much of the rationale for enslaving Africans was because of the occidental view that Black people were barbarians, Africa as “the heart of darkness,” and that Africa’s “primitive” cultures were cannibalistic. Hence “the white man’s burden” of civilizing Africans by enslavement. Since, abolitionists have pointed the finger at Europeans for both literally and figuratively eating sugar stained with the flesh and blood of slaves. Who is the cannibal now?

“Sugar Coat” is a deliberate double entendre as it exposes the practices of extraction (of people, of natural resources, etc.) as well as the mild-manners used to justify and make the strategic storytelling of Black history more digestible; what Leslie refers to as “a sticky history.” The exhibition includes Rose Hall, a famous plantation in Jamaica. But plantation is an American signifier. In Jamaica, these would be called “great houses.” After the formal abolition of slavery, King George released commemorative stamps upon which he named himself “Supreme Lord of Jamaica.” These artefacts are included in Christina Leslie’s work, rinsed and hardened in her unique sugar solution, adding prisms through which we can see right through the “polite” ways our history has been told with a dose of benevolence. Sugar has a way of killing us.

In four series, Likkle Acts uses the lens as medium to tell deep family history, all the while connected to collective culture and history. A few steps above “Sugar Coat” exhibits “Morant Memories,” a single-channel video plays where there are images of a recognizable Jamaica, with the voices of Leslie’s father and aunt overlaid. They are discussing how her aunt met her uncle in 1969, a mere seven years after Jamaica’s independence. There is laughter and conviviality. An amalgam of Jamaican riddims are dubbed together as the sonic background of the video.

It became immediately clear to me that this was not about Jamaican idolatry and selfies; how we sometimes see Jamaica get portrayed for profit (as I explained in my review, Selling Bob Marley). Leslie elucidates that the entire exhibition is steeped in the folklore of Nanny of the Maroons – a freedom fighter who led Jamaican guerilla fighters throughout the 17^th century, Samuel Sharpe – leader of the Baptist War slave rebellion until 1832, and Paul Bogle – a Jamaican national hero who led the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865. Using Marley as inspiration for her show’s title also evokes the legacy of Marcus Garvey, Peter Tosh, and so many other rebels who used muscle and music toward liberation. There is no idolizing. Leslie puts her father, a native to Morant Bay, her uncle, her aunties, her grandmother, the children and locals of Jamaica all on the same plane as these larger-than-life figures. She unites popular culture with the familiar ethos of the island: out of many, one people.

Looking at the photography of “Pinhole Parish,” the series in the same room as “Morant Bay” (2018) and St. Thomas, JA (2024), it is also clear that these photographs are intergenerational. The use of pinhole cameras to capture a Jamaica that is contemporary but feels like the photographs of her father’s childhood is a masterful skill. Leslie’s work looks like the same albums we children of immigrants would have seen from the ‘70s and ‘80s as our parents showed us their memories of home. These images are blurry and have a breeze to them that feels like dreaming at the pace of a one-drop rhythm. We have seen these scenes before, but we still slow down to take it all in.

The black and white photography of these series looks more like a sleek, stylized representation of home and family. Capturing the mundane, the gaze becomes clearer:  a pivot away from dreamscape and into landscape and cityscape, audiences realize the care, mutual aid, connection to family and neighbours that are all little acts of kindness. These small acts bear much weight, not just from the plump cheeks and watery eyes of the auntie who is making food, but from the knowledge of how much grit it takes to grow old. We see it and feel it, this reminder that caring for each other reverberates throughout the communities we encounter.

After walking me through her art, and practice, and ideas, I asked Christina Leslie about her dreams. We discussed home as a place that identifies and sees you. She added “I hope this exhibition travels. I want it to end up in Jamaica. I want the people to say ‘thank you for sharing our story.’” By now Christina Leslie is shy but you can still see the pride that she carries in her people, the places that inform her. I asked if she uses sugar as a metaphor for how delicate and dissolvable this history is, or to show how crystallized and hardened we have become because of it. There is no answer, just a nod to each other that we recognize that it is always both, more, all of it.

I attended the opening reception of Likkle Acts, as well as the artist talk, and then the workshop hosted by the artist. Each and every one of these events was sold out. From what I gathered, the community felt seen. The audiences saw home, saw our own families, our own memories enlarged and celebrated. We heard our own music, and read our own language. We saw a retelling of history from our side. I speak for myself as I say a loud biggup to Christina Leslie for giving us an exhibition to rally around, and an archive to point to so we can say, “see, that really did happen.”