Story written by Isis Semaj-Hall
As a Jamaican writer-scholar, I am inclined to begin a discussion of Chain of Love: Rice and Peas Bush in Lower South Camp (2024), an ecological public artwork by visual artist Camille Chedda when and where Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter[1] begins 530 years ago, in May of 1494 when the Tainos of Yamaye discovered Columbus and his men offshore in strange cloud-tipped canoes. This land’s first people could never have imagined the imposition and exploitation that was to come. They could not have anticipated the planting of flags – first Spanish, then British; nor could they have foreseen diasporas of people forced from Africa and lured from Asia. The fruits, flowers, and fronds stowed on European-commissioned Jamaica-bound ships from Africa and Asia, all for the sake of feeding colonial husbandry, could not have been predicted as the Tainos gazed out on the not-yet-warmer and not-yet-polluted waters of their island home that was not-yet-losing landmass under climate change’s sea-level rise.
Why examine a 21st-century art installation through a 15th-century perspective? I begin here because centuries of abuse, exploitation, and neglect continue to impact us and our environment today. But through new and meaningful partnerships, there is a way for us to survive and bloom anew. Through the arts and culture nonprofit organisation Kingston Creative’s[2] participation in the Global Co-commission,[3] an international initiative foregrounding subaltern community knowledge, contextualising the global climate crisis, and driving collective action in public art in urban spaces, Chedda’s Chain of Love installation can plant seeds of community-building possibilities.
The title and theme of the Global Co-commission is A Feral Commons, which refers to the co-dependences and collaborations between humans, plants, animals, and water. What history does the word “feral” hold for a postcolonial place like Jamaica? For many, it recalls those Africans who were freed and who freed themselves to the hinterlands of this island. The Spanish called them “cimarrónes” because these formerly enslaved people were deemed “wild” and feral for stealing off to live free in the island’s densely forested, mountainous, bio-diverse, and colonially inaccessible interior. But Jamaica’s cimarrónes, later anglicized as Maroons, survived because of their knowledge of their environment and their ability to coexist with nature.[4]
I begin with this historical grounding because today, in the legacy of colonialism, plantation devastation, industrial/ technological/ and digital revolutions, and a worsening climate crisis that will unevenly impact small island states like Jamaica, we, like the Tainos, are facing the possibility of annihilation. Just as it was for the Maroons in the 16th century, today, our future as Kingstonians depends on our ability to work with nature. Our chances of climate survival in this urban space depend on the actions we take now to shift away from the abuse of nature and towards building a respectful and reciprocal relationship with our natural environment.
In 2015, Kingston became a UNESCO-designated creative city of music. Decades before, the world came to know Downtown Kingston through the voice and lyrics of Bob Marley of The Wailers, who sang out in 1973 that this place is a hard and difficult “concrete jungle” where few can survive.[5] In a way, Chedda extends the possibilities of the “concrete jungle” through her vision to reinvigorate a community park at Tower Street and South Camp Road. In partnership with Kingston Creative, residents of the community, and local government representatives, Chedda’s vision for an equitable and beautiful multi-species community space blossomed. But true to Kingston’s “concrete jungle” reality, the road to fruition was hard and hot.
This park’s community has seen an unfair share of violence. Meetings with residents were sometimes difficult as people had concerns for their safety. The park needed repairs that could only be completed by elected officials, so when local elections were held during the park’s rehabilitation, the change in representation meant unavoidable delays. Still committed to the community and the project, Chedda persisted and forged relationships with the men, women, and children she met in and around the park. She came to know residents like the community gardener Mr. Peary, the cookshop-keeper Miss Madge, and the well-respected and well-loved Mas Joe (Joseph Manning).
For many in the community, Mas Joe was synonymous with the park. Chedda learned that he planned the park decades ago, and he installed the ironwork that borders the space. On any given day, he could be found there with a warm smile and a gentle spirit. So, when Mas Joe passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Easter Weekend 2024, during the planning and installation process for Chain of Love, sadness swept over everyone in the space and people working on the project. With this heavy loss, Chedda’s artistic vision had a chance to prove its restorative power. Even before the project was complete, it provided a space of solace and comfort. Her installation of a metal-arch-topped cement structure was designed to give the wild Rice and Peas bush (Antigonon leptopus) a way to climb overhead. It also functions as shaded seating for park-goers to look at photographs of people in the community who worked together to create this “feral commons.” Under the metal-meets-plant archway, the cement base blocks frame what are now deeply sentimental images of Mas Joe’s last days. Because of his role in the park’s original development, Chedda planned to include his likeness in a mural panel, but with his passing, her painting of him evolved to honour his legacy in the community. Sitting in or walking through the commons, the mural depicting Mas Joe’s warm eyes and smiling face can be seen and felt.
Alongside Mas Joe, Miss Madge’s cookshop is also featured in one of the many murals painted by Chedda and a group of volunteer artists from the community. Large images of residents’ dogs, cats, birds, and a very large rooster are brightly painted on the commons’ back wall. Depictions of children and adults resting on blankets and benches invite passersby to do the same. Connecting the mural’s panels are paintings of the pink-flowering vines of the Rice and Peas bush. As a common fast-growing plant on the island, the Rice and Peas bush had taken over this downtown park during its years of disuse. Pretty but not ornamental, Jamaican gardeners tend not to invite Rice and Peas bushes into their botanical spaces. But this feral plant has both nutritional value (the edible seeds are used as a substitute for making the eponymously named dish Rice and Peas) and medicinal value (the leaves are brewed for tea to relieve cold symptoms and menstrual cramps). Rather than remove the bush and the ecosystem it supports (bees, in particular), Chedda left much of it untouched. While the northern area has been de-bushed to accommodate people and an herb garden, the commons’ southern area remains fully feral. The Hope Royal Botanic Gardens and the Forestry Department donated mint and basil plants, as well as flowering bougainvillea and plumbago plants to line the commons’ footpaths.
Where once there was a park that had fallen into wild disrepair, now thrives an active public space revived by art. In this community park, neighbours now gather in the shade to reflect, and when needed, they can nourish and heal themselves with medical and edible plants that flourish in the space. With climate concerns graduating to climate crisis realities, this ecological public artwork invites the community to return to the land, to their roots for sustenance. In this “feral commons” new seeds of climate resilience have been planted. Environmental caretaking now rests in the able hands of the community, just as it did long ago. To survive, people and plants must coexist in the concrete jungle that is Kingston.
[1] Here I refer to Sylvia Wynter’s book chapter: “1492: A New World View,” Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View. Editors Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, pp. 5 -57.
Kingston Creative was founded in 2017 to nurture and support the creative ecosystem of Downtown[2] Kingston. For more information, visit https://kingstoncreative.org/ourstory/.
[3] A Feral Commons is the central theme of the Global Co-Commission, an initiative by Alserkal Advisory in partnership with the Global Cultural Districts Network and supported by Urban Art Projects, please visit https://aferalcommons.com/the-global-co-commission-2/.
[4] See Orlando Patterson’s article: “Slavery And Slave Revolts: A Socio-Historical Analysis Of The First Maroon War Jamaica, 1655 – 1740.” Social and Economic Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, 1970, pp. 289–325.
[5] As sung by The Wailers on the reggae classic “Concrete Jungle” (1973, Island Records, UK).
