The banana, rum and pineapple plantations were just a short drive away from the ship. Tour guides would wait at the pier to hail down passengers. I couldn’t tour the plantations, but rows of greenery were abundant as we drove past dozens of platformed houses in the thick of ample plant life. At every stop for views of the horizon meeting the glistening water, merchants lined up waiting to sell fruit from their own yards or plantations where they worked among various trinkets, keychains, scarves and souvenirs, each adorned with Caribbean iconography. I’m reminded that visiting the island my father called home was also my tourist destination.

The gravity of displacement and the burden of labor is a history that outlasts the first generation of West African nations crossing the Middle Passage, manifesting in forms of systemic oppression and resistance. I consider aesthetics of desirability on plantation landscapes when hand building serving vessels or when stringing candy necklaces onto figural forms. Serving as a metaphor for placelessness and a reality for those who survived, the Middle Passage also symbolizes vanishing histories. I question how time can be an abstracted concept for both preserving and artificializing histories.