Sonya Dumas’s interactive exhibition examines the impact of the Middle Passage on T&T’s culture
UPDATE:Exhibition extended until Saturday 30th April 2022
‘BODIES OF MEMORY’, an interactive installation by dance artist and filmmaker Sonja Dumas, which navigates feelings about the Middle Passage, its effect on the body and its impact on the history of movement culture in Trinidad and Tobago, is currently open to the public at the Medulla Art Gallery, in Port of Spain, until April 30.
The work is part of the artist’s research for her PhD in Cultural Studies at The University of the West Indies at St Augustine. According to Dumas: ‘This installation is an enquiry into my current investigations about the bodies of water that fuelled the very evolution of race, status and what it means to be Caribbean.
“I want to consider their influences on how we move, and why.”
It is an immersive, interactive space to navigate feelings about the Middle Passage and its effect on the body.
The immersive installation is the first solo exhibition for Dumas. ‘It was quite daunting. I had to think about space in a different way from how I approach it as a dancer or choreographer, but still offer that sense of ebb and flow – both of the work and of history.
Many people suffered in the Middle Passage, but there is a retention and resilience of body, mind and spirit that has lived on from generation to generation, and that is what interests me.
What was adopted and retained, and why? How do we represent and hold that history in our bodies today?’
There will also be a free artist talk on Friday at 7 p.m. at the gallery, 37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook. Dumas will be interviewed by leading Caribbean cultural analyst and development specialist Dr Marielle Barrow, who will be online in the live space.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sonja Dumas is a multi-hyphenate arts practitioner, educator and theorist, specializing in Caribbean culture. Her main areas of concentration are dance and film. She is a co-founder, co-director and co-curator of COCO Dance Festival, the largest contemporary dance festival in the English-speaking Caribbean. An award-winning filmmaker, Sonja has written, directed and produced several films that speak to the Caribbean experience. She has also co-curated exhibitions with Meridian International Center (in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution), and for the National Library and National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago. Mostly recently, she founded Zum-Zum Museum, an interactive Caribbean heritage children’s museum. Sonja holds a bachelor’s degree (honours) in Public and International Affairs along with certificates in Theatre and Dance and in Afro-American Studies from Princeton University, a Master of Business Administration (Marketing) from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in Carnival Studies from the University of Trinidad and Tobago. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies where she is investigating Trinidad and Tobago movement culture that may have emerged from the Middle Passage journey made by enslaved Africans. She is also currently an artist in residence at Black Spatial Relics, a performance residency about slavery, justice and freedom.
