La Vaughn Belle

As a practice of mutual aid and resourced solidarity, The Black Mecca Project was an accountable sponsor of the dECOlonial Feelin Symposium in St. Croix. TBMP also hosted a reception in Atlanta for artist La Vaughn Belle immediately following the Atlanta symposium.

Artist STATEMENT

My work is about unbecoming a colonial being and the power of story in that process. I was born in the dual island nation of Trinidad in Tobago with all my political rights intact. I would soon lose them when my parents migrated to the U.S. Virgin Islands when I was 5 months old and I became something between a subject and a citizen. I belong to this place that has changed colonial hands seven times—the longest being Denmark and the last being the United States. My work deals with this history, that is both personal and global, and tells new stories that validate freedom and self-determination. In my practice I examine archives, architecture and other aspects of material culture from the colonial period. I look for the narratives inscribed in various objects and places. I find ways to add to them and subvert them by layering other narratives including my own. I also look to elements in the natural world like the land or sea and powerful forces like the hurricane or the black hole for strategies to create new geographies. I move fluidly between painting, sculpture, video, public intervention and writing. In this way I am sometimes making myths, other times maps, counter monuments and archives. What is constant are my desires to piece together the fragments, to move beyond colonial nostalgia and to make visible the unremembered.

The dECOlonial Feelin Symposium, organized by the Virgin Islands Studies Collective (VISCO), aims to deepen discussions on decoloniality through storytelling, creative writing, philosophy, archiving, and spiritual practice.

VISCO, a collective of academics, artists, and activists, seeks to reframe the Virgin Islands as a site of intellectual and cultural inquiry. The upcoming St. Croix symposium builds on prior events held in St. Thomas in May 2024 and in Atlanta from September 19-21, 2024, where discussions and artistic collaborations shaped the ongoing conversation. The symposium will feature a mix of structured discussions, performances, and interactive sessions designed to foster reflection on identity, culture, and community within the Virgin Islands. The dECOlonial Feelin Symposium represents the final stage of a larger dECOlonial Feelin Project, which has fostered creative and scholarly discourse across multiple locations. The event in St. Croix will serve as a culmination of these discussions, providing a space for deeper engagement with cultural identity, history, and artistic expression in the Virgin Islands.