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This two-part series is born from the melding of two landscapes divided by the Atlantic Ocean: the Western Region of Ghana and the town of Loiza in my homeland, Puerto Rico. This immersive exhibition is composed of photo transfers, field recordings from the landscape of the coastal forest of the Western Region, and a new element in my practice, the union of sound and smell achieved by boiling local plants, “weeds”, in whistling tea kettles.

Installed in the 7th floor experimental art space, The Treehouse overlooking the Lagos Lagoon, a photo transfer of overlapping, collaged landscapes is placed on the glass sliding door facing the city. This superimposition mirrors the experience of people who were forcibly carried across the same ocean that now separates them from their original home. Surrounding buildings, live trees and the lagoon become part of the image, evoking the past city as forest and the forging of a relationship between natural landscapes and built environments.

The protagonist in the transfers is tropical land and seascapes as witnesses, memory carriers and knowledge holders of the histories of transatlantic slavery from which my Caribbean roots are forged. Carrying the lineage of an Igbo woman captured and transported to the island of Jamaica, traces of my indigenous Andean ancestry and the inevitable Iberian roots forced into my bloodstream through colonization, I use the forests and the sea as indicators of this layered history.

The boiling of plants to emit smells, the scream of the whistle indicating a disturbance, the distorted soundscape of the birds, insects, the ocean waves, all create an immersive space both compelling and uneasy. What do these forcibly merged spaces become? Who do we transform into?

“When I transpose the images of these landscapes on either side of the Atlantic Sea, I see the tree bark, roots, mycelium, leaves, rocks, salt water, sand, earth, as the original archives, our first libraries, they hold the knowledge of the world and beyond, as well as our histories, our pain, our experiences... that is what this work is trying to communicate.”