Salina Jane is a visual artist of Indo-Guyanese descent who creates art along the themes of heritage, identity and the experience of her family through indenture and their journey from India to Guyana to the UK.
Throughout our childhood my siblings and I knew our parents were from Guyana; we visited once as children for an amazing summer, meeting our family and experiencing the country, at once exotic, mysterious, strange and so different from home. It was a distant place in our background thoughts. We knew that our great great grandparents were from India, but we didn’t really know much more than that. We were happy to be proudly British.
Over the last few years politics and culture in the UK, and probably age, have prompted a desire to discover more about my family story and culture. And as an artist this means exploring this journey through my art practice, and research, lots of research. I wanted to know what would prompt my ancestors to take that long, perilous journey, across the sea from India to Guyana. What must it have felt like, what hardships and joys did they experience, who were they and what were they like?
I read and talked to people, I watched videos and as I did this I drew. With each mark I made on the paper I imagined what it was like for those indentured workers, for my family and others. What must they have thought as they got off the boats from India and saw this new land, which was British Guiana? In 2018 I was fortunate to exhibit the work I created in this exploration with a group of Caribbean artists at the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission in London in a show organised by Trinidadian artist Tricia Trotman-Maraj. I had so many conversations with visitors and met lots of young people, 2nd or 3rd generation West Indian, who told me they didn’t know this story of indenture and that they had never been to the Caribbean, although they identified with these far away, unknown places. These histories aren’t taught in our schools and it’s a little-known story in the UK, so I decided I needed to draw more.
I was invited to exhibit at the Elizabeth James Gallery in London the same year, as part of their ‘Flava’s of the Caribbean’ exhibition and created a series of oil pastel drawings based on my memories of Guyana. I was eight years old when I had visited, so those memories were sensory, almost dreamlike. Certain things stood out to me such as standing in the market eating shave ice in the hot, hot, sun. I remember drinking coconut water from a straw out of the green coconut, and that coconut jelly, wow, I had never tasted anything like it before, and as I type I can still taste that memory. I remember swimming in the ‘coca cola pools’, waters the colour of coca-cola which delighted us as children no end. I asked my mother where the coca-cola pools were, because I couldn’t find them on the internet, and she laughed and told me.. they aren’t really called that. I drew Stabroek Market and the streets of Georgetown, using blurry old family photographs, looking up pictures on the internet and drawing on my own imagination and grainy memories.
It’s difficult to find out information about my family, so my work contains a lot of what I imagine these stories to be like. Not everyone wants to share their stories of a life they left behind, and some memories are painful. Or sadly family members can no longer remember or are not here anymore to share their tales with me. But I feel a responsibility to share their history, to tell what I know of them and to create visual images that celebrate and commemorate their lives. Why a responsibility? Because I am here because they were there, I am able to be an artist because of their hard labour and I am grateful. It is my way of honouring them.
Sometimes there are only snippets of a story. When people speak of my Granny who was born in George-town in 1898 my cousins and my parents say ‘she had a hard life’. I try with my art to find a way beyond that to another narrative. That’s where research comes in and attending events by organisations in the UK like Guyana Speaks or the Ameena Gafoor Institute help me to imagine the person behind the one liners we have repeated over and again that describe members of my family and their lives.
Other experiences connect me to my Guyanese roots. This summer in the UK I grew ginger root for the first time. We really don’t have the right weather for this plant but I tried anyway, keeping it indoors, watering carefully and potting up as it got bigger. I felt a profound sense of connection to my great grandmother Muradhan. I felt like she was standing there with me, her hands guiding me as it tended this plant, this same plant that she would grow, that she would use to cook food for her family with. It was the strongest connection I had felt to that past in Guyana. So I drew this story, thinking about those connections we have through ginger, through rice, through sugar. I thought about the plants Muradhan would grow to eat for necessity; for food and the plants I grow, for pleasure as my hobby, to eat for food and just for joy. The resulting piece is called ‘Growing Ginger’ and is drawn on cotton rag paper, painted with tea and in ink and pastel.
This leads me to my current exhibition, ‘Following the Thread’, my first solo show in the UK. I will feature my art along the themes of identity, culture and heritage. It tells the story of indenture and celebrates Guyana and my amazing family who have worked so hard and travelled so far with such courage. I will unveil for the first time my most ambitious drawing to date, ‘I came for the adventure,’ which tells the story of that journey. I’ve drawn much of Guyanese life in it, including Stabroek market, where my family had a shop when my Dad was a child. It includes the 3 week boat journey my dad made from Guyana to Southampton in 1956 which brought my family to the UK.
I always feel it is a privilege to be an artist, one afforded me by the labour, love, hardships and bravery of my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and my ancestors. My Mother says it is what parents wish for, that their children can have a better life than they did. I celebrate those lives through my art and hope others will enjoy and appreciate them too.
Salina Jane will be exhibiting her art in her first solo exhibition ‘Following the Thread’ at Queens Park Arts Centre, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire UK from 16th November to 1st December. You can view her work on her Instagram or Facebook page @salinajaneart or at her website; www.salinajaneart.com