the fecund, the lush and the salted land waits for a harvest...her people...ripe with promise, wait until the next blowing season

Overview

In this lyrical and immersive installation by Deborah Jack, shots of lush orange pomegranates mix with the ocean, sky, and shoreline. Filmed by the artist around her mother's home on Saint Martin, these images appear alongside footage of salt mining from a 1948 Dutch documentary about the island. Pomegranates and salt, both emblems of death and rebirth, share a common legacy as commodities of the colonial economy in the region. Using movement, color, and time, Jack's installation serves as a condemnation of the destructive nature of economies based on resource extraction, as well as a reclamation of the Caribbean's visual and material cultures. Her work complicates fixed understandings of the Caribbean, offering an invitation into the myriad, shifting histories and identities held within the landscape itself.