Please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about where in the region you are based, and share some of the major ideas and themes you engage with in your practice.
My name is Sasha-Kay Nicole, I am a visual activist, experimental photographer, conceptual artist, and aspiring community arts educator from Downtown Kingston Jamaica.
My artistic praxis explores the essence of Black feminine experiences and our pursuit of visibility, healing and liberation. I draw from lived experiences to create work rooted in emotional vulnerability and intimate narratives, while thinking through the duality of self-identity and spirit. Throughout this process, I am connecting with the rich lineage of ancestral and global Black feminist scholarship. With each project, I create to elevate our collective consciousness and livity while advocating against the systemic injustices that continue to harm us.
Central to my praxis is autophotographic portraiture. This research methodology is constantly shifting between autobiographical performance and collective community overstandings; seeking to expand the sublimity of layered Black feminine complexities while challenging perceived stereotypical understandings of Black feminine existence.
At the time of applying for the TENDER grant, you mentioned a desire to “produce a new body of work that reflects the emotional, spiritual, and political dimensions of Black femme life in Jamaica.” Can you expand a bit on these themes and the approaches you are considering for this new work, as well as some of the ways you have engaged in community-driven research to inform its direction?
I’m currently building a photo archive as part of an effort to make black femme life stories more visible. By working to counter a history of Black femme invisibility and pushing back against stereotypical images of black womxn and girls in media with more affirming ones.
For this new direction, I am drawing on the fullness and complexity of Black femmes life in Jamaica, photo-documenting our dimensionality and resilience. I want to show our lives beyond the narrow framing of trauma and abuse.
My work with New Local Space truly inspired me to develop this archival project in collaboration with Black Girls in my community (DownTown Kingston). The idea emerged from my participation in a project called Sighting Black Girlhood. This project is an international collaboration conceptualized in partnership with the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class at the University of Johannesburg, and New Local Space (NLS). The project brings the issues facing Black girls globally to public attention, making space for celebration and support.
So I started a free film photography workshop to create a space where Black girls are not only seen, but heard and remembered on their own terms, where they can produce images that reflect their essence, environments, and everyday lives. Giving them complete autonomy while working together to produce memorable images for the future.
Though it is an expensive undertaking, I hope to receive further financial support to sustain and grow this project, eventually expanding it to include other communities within the broader spectrum of Black femme life experiences.
I am excited about this new direction.
In addition to initiatives like TENDER, what other kinds of support or programming geared towards the needs of contemporary creative practitioners would you like to see implemented in the Caribbean?
Firstly, I want to thank spaces such as Fresh Milk Barbados and NLS Kingston for supporting practices like mine across the Caribbean.
To be honest, the region is still in need of so much foundational support and infrastructure. Artists like myself want to contribute to that development, but we are often isolated or discouraged from returning after graduate school because of the limited support systems available at home. Because our experiences would assist greatly in addressing these gaps. I would love to see programs that support and encourage our return.
I have also come to realize that we as young artists have to begin building the programs we wish existed. This requires us to be more community-minded, collaborating with one another rather than waiting on institutions or more established artists to create opportunities for us. While we may be working with very little, there is still possibility in what we can build together. Through collective effort, we can create the spaces and conditions we need, not only to sustain ourselves, but to truly live from our work, and to inspire the next generation of artists.
fresh milk barbados 