Morne Fortune

Morne Fortune delves into the entanglements of colonialism, history, archive and monument to propose new objects and manners of commemoration. Combining multiple voices and modalities into an intricate collage, Mara Chavez and doris duhennois point to the need for the inclusion of diverse perspectives to complicate the reductive nature of colonial history. Digital media, celluloid film and 3D modelling each speak to the layers of knowledge and how they are contained and represented. The directors highlight the difficulty of working with the European-based colonial archives, which, although often the only official records that remain, are frequently incomplete and at times, intentionally silent.

Chavez and duhennois therefore ask questions not only about what is visible, but more importantly, about what is missing or omitted from the history that has been constructed. They discuss how the focus on the numerous struggles between the French and English colonizers for the control of the Caribbean island of Iyanola, known as Saint Lucia, erases the rebellion and resistance of the local Black population that was punished through exile, whose leaders were punished through exile, while others were subjected to the restitution of enslavement. 

Taking the location of the final major colonizer battle as a point of departure, the proposition of considering space as a living archive and monument to the events that happened there is an important one, hinting at the inescapable haunting of the present by the past. The shaping of commemoration is transferred from the elite few to the many residents, who then have the power of imbuing territory with symbolism and meaning. (Nadine Valcin)