Belonging and Being
In the serial images that make up Forgotten Paradise: Passage, a collaborative project by Malick Welli and Charlotte Brathwaite, twinned individuals embrace, stand authoritatively, release doves, and even fly kites against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of Jones Beach, New York. According to the artists, this collaborative effort depicts "the sea as both a witness to histories of forced migration and a metaphor for the fluidity of identity and belonging." The images unfold as a series of vignettes, each a poignant exploration of the emotional and spiritual currents that continue to shape diasporic memory today. They invite the viewer to connect with the profound feelings and experiences depicted. They might be read as doing memory work or what scholar Emmah Lee Amponsah defines as 'Black Cultural Memory.' This concept by Amopnsah refers to the Collective memory of the African diaspora, which includes not only personal histories and memories but also cultural legacies and how we remember them. It extends this understanding of memory beyond individual experiences to a broader cultural context.
Jones Beach is significant because it served historically as a public recreational space for Black communities, which was not always accessible due to segregation and systemic racism. In the contemporary, this beach and the Atlantic Ocean are offered as sites of renewal and reflection.
Most striking of these pairs are those that turn their backs to the viewer, refusing our gaze. Instead, attention focuses on their gestures, which Welli describes as a "deliberate symbolism that foregrounds the power of water, flight, and ritual as acts of resistance and resilience." This resistive and resilient stance is evident in all of these images centred on Black bodies that reject any recreating or allusion to the most insurmountable trauma that the Atlantic Ocean and West African shoreline symbolise. In one image, two women, one older, both dressed in white, engage in a cleansing or baptism ritual. The younger kneels on the shore as water is poured over her head. This ritual, depicted with such reverence, carries a profound significance. In another, two spirit-like women dressed in white with wings attached to their backs carry two white ships on their heads in what can be read as an uplifting gesture alluding to a resurrection of sunken slave ships at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
As the artist explained, these gestures of pouring water, carrying ships, and releasing feathers—invite viewers to engage with memory, renewal, and healing without recreating the weight of historical trauma.
What does it mean to listen to images? Why do images seem to be haunted by their contexts of production? Tina Campt reminds us of the centrality of being touched by images due to their haptic nature. She insists that we think about touch as being affective and emotional, along with how such connections allow us to create a memory, an aspiration, to each other as social beings—even if we don't know or don't have knowledge of the person in an image. The series of images in Forgotten Paradise: Passage touches us so we can rethink the archive of trauma answers as an active space for reflection, healing, and renewal. These images use gestures as an invitation to a deeper engagement of the spiritual and emotional undercurrents of belonging through photographs imbued with a diasporic touch.
by curator Jareh Das
