Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies.
My project aims to intersect metaphorically and visually two load-bearing characteristics that are at the base of the postcolonial formation of the society: the presence of oil and gas, and the forced trade of African slavery and Indian labor.
The first characteristic is represented in the project shows the areas of oil extraction located in remote areas of the center of the island. The second aspect of this project is reflected by the choice to portray a specific carnival mask, the Moko Jumbie, a local mask with origins from the African continent that evokes the slave trade as part of the formation of the country.
In this visual work I interpret the passages (from the title) of the African spirit of Moko as a metaphorical manifestation of the liminal temporal stage (ages in the title) between past and present, between the slave and forced labor trade and the contemporary anticolonial country that is still dependent on the multinational oil companies.
The goal of this project is to create a visual trans-temporal re-possession of the history by the historical subalterns of Trinidad from the slave trade, where they repossess the colonial and neocolonial history of the country through their presence.
Moreover, my aim is to show part of the liminal spaces that breaks the boundaries of the visual within the visual itself. The ancestors are digitally superposed with the oil locations in order to let them visually possess and appropriate the spaces of power.
