Rhiannon Marquez
The Sugar Is Sweeter Now
Photography
2021
35mm and 120mm film
Through the camera the language of the landscape and people were examined in the face of lingering traumas from the plantation system in Barbados. The Sugar is Sweeter Now explores how a system of enslavement and sugar production made the island one of the riches British colonies and how this has shaped the landscape today; from architecture and nature to the culture.
“I grew up on an island where the majority of the population was black and yet I remember there being a bench, termed the white bench, that was painted in a deep green and therefore not named for its appearance but rather the people that perched on it. Neither did I notice that the private school l attended didn’t reflect the makeup of the island. The system was mimicked from the British, our colonizers, it was a system we never learnt to challenge. Race was no longer our problem. History lessons were about the plantation system, its gentle shadow taught as having faded away while we welcomed the visitors to our tropical paradise and put on a smile. As a white presenting, mixed heritage Bajan the topic of how our island was oppressed, and the parts we play in it felt difficult to broach. As if the wealth of our island was precarious and attained by numbing our lips to the evils of plantocracy and how it has lingered.Sugar is meant to sweeten after all, the blood shed and bodies made meagre to produce it should not enter the touristic canon of Barbados. Instead, I believe the enslavement that conjured up wealth from the sugar and rum is deeply entangled in our tourism despite the break away from the crown. “The Sugar is Sweeter Now” deals with the blurred lines of these transgressions and contextualizes the iconography associated with the island and its roots in the transatlantic slave trade.”
Work by
Rhiannon Marquez aka. Rhi
Photography
“A photographer working between analogue and digital realms to create work that touches on more than aesthetics. Aware of the rules and happy to break them when the context demands. Creativity changes...” [More]