Fruition is a work that celebrates the abundance and fecundity of West Indian flora, particularly fruit, while simultaneously exploring the impacts of slavery and colonization through the lens of economic botany. Fruit, while symbolising fertility, bounty, and wealth, also has a troubled historical relationship with labour and class, especially in the Caribbean. Illustrated representations of fruits from the 18th and 19th centuries accompany the artist’s relief-printed domestic trimmings – napkins, tablecloths, linens, wallpaper. These botanical lithographs highlight how carefully the mercantile potential of fruits and resources of the natural world were catalogued, while the same value was rarely assigned to the human lives instrumental in producing these fruits. Central to Fruition is the act of labouring. The tablecloths are painstakingly hand printed, the napkins are delicately embroidered, the fruits are laboriously cast. Each component is beautiful and decorative without belying the vast amounts of labour involved in their production. The work is a joyful, immersive installation that explores the complex relationship between Caribbean fruit and the hands that picked it.
About the Artist
Ceilidh Munroe is a Jamaican-Canadian artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver. In this work she will be exploring Caribbean hybridity and identity through fruit. In addition to its symbolism of fertility, bounty, and wealth, fruit has a troubled history and relationship with labour and class, especially in the Caribbean. Ceilidh has created a joyful, immersive installation that emphasizes the relationship between the joy of fruit and the hands that pick it.
