"The West Indies has a culture and a tradition of having maternal lead communities, centered on tender care and selflessness. From cooking food for the entire household, neighbors, and any unplanned but anticipated visitors to packing barrels for distant family friends and fictive kin, these practices and values are passed down to succeeding generations. These maternal figures also carry the tradition of holding onto family heirlooms and mementos like jewelry, recipes, and photographs, becoming the curators of their own family archive.
My project Found, Fond is a re-exploration of familial homes that I grew up in that, now as an adult, I am able to appreciate more as a museum of my family’s life. Through two houses, on both maternal and paternal sides, I document the living archives through still life imagery, from artifacts and keepsakes, to deliberately placed old photographs, to portraits of living room decor, to the portrait wall of relatives. With my paternal great-grandmother as the buyer of the house, passing on artifacts and documents to my father and grandfather, as well as my maternal grandmother adding to her collection of family photographs, this project seeks to memorialize the ways in which my living and passed ancestors, and relatives, continue to mark their presence and preserve their family histories."
