The Real Princess

In the European fairytale, The Princess and the Pea, a true princess is one whose pedigree is confirmed when she feels, through multiple layers of padding, the slightest discomfort of a pea. The Real Princess of the Caribbean story must reckon with something far heavier: the multi-layered violence of colonial history and its ongoing reverberations.

Her body references a Taino zemi. On her head she wears a sacred Mende crown and a backward-facing Sankofa bird. She rests on a chest of drawers, a cabinet of curiosity, each drawer a different layer of trauma embedded within the history of the colonised Americas — from Indigenous extermination and the transatlantic slave trade to state violence, propaganda, and inherited structures of self-erasure. The Real Princess's discomfort is not imagined. It is inherited.

Images below show The Real Princess installed at Devon House in Kingston, as part of the 2017 Jamaica Biennial.

The Real Princess (2016), 29” x 34” x 12”. Chest of drawers; mixed media.

    • The arrival of Empire and the subsequent extermination of Indigenous peoples

    • The propaganda of Church and State

    • The Transatlantic Slave Trade

    • The pedagogy of self-hate

    • The 1937 Parsley Massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic

    • The 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, regarded as the first act of aviation terrorism in the Americas