Colonial Food and Botanical Research Project Campaign
This initiative, funded in part by this GoFundMe campaign, is designed to sustain a critical discourse on contemporary art, circum-Caribbean culture, and a creative project investigating origins and uses of subsistence foodcrops used during the African Atlantic slave era and today. Twenty-six crops native to or introduced from Africa (millet, sorghum, rice, yams, plantains, black-eyed peas, watermelon, etc.) influence people’s lives globally. The impact of these and other botanical products open an important, yet not widely known history of plant knowledge and their uses.
The residency initiative offers a platform for visual and interdisciplinary art practice to take risks, make discoveries, and challenge traditional systems of thought, production, and personal being. The initiative is also an opportunity to work in non-traditional studio in the rural natural environment, giving the time, solitude, and focus allowing Shabaka to access to the outdoor environment, and an inspirational setting where Maroon populations escaped slavery as far back as 1667, while also having access to research and interaction with the local Suriname maroon community.
Onajide is a multimedia visual artist, curator and writer, with an MFA in Visual Art. Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator www.dvcai.org seeks your support to fund Jide to spend undisturbed devoted time creating work in his studio and participating in the Moengo Festival of Visual Arts, Maroon Town in Suriname.
Funds will be used to create work and to participate in the artist residency in Moengo, Suriname with artists Marcel Pinas www.marcelpinas.net & Kurt Nahar www.readytexartgallery.com/kurtnahar
These dedicated funds will only be used for this project.
With much gratitude and thanksgiving this desire to create work with Maroons in Suriname will be realized.
Thank you all for your gracious and generous support.
