As my solo exhibition Close to Home at the Queens Museum nears its final weeks (on view until January 19, 2025), I want to share the story behind Metem, a short film that I made in collaboration with my family that holds a special place in this show.
First of all, Metem is kind of a super meta art project, it was filmed in the exhibition space it’s being shown in. Last year, I had the profound experience of visiting Guyana with my mother for the first time. It was her first time returning there after 52 years and it was a deeply emotional experience. I grew up with Caribbean culture but there was still room for my appreciation of it to grow after visiting Guyana. My parents both hail from the Caribbean—my mother from Guyana and my father from Trinidad—and their journeys have profoundly shaped my understanding of identity, culture, and family. Inspired by this connection, Metem captures myself, my mother, my sister, and other family members sharing stories and memories of life in Guyana, and how moving to the United States affected them. Through the process of making Metem I got to learn so much more about how Caribbeans preserve African culture, making this work even more special.
The three-channel film was made in my exhibition space during the final week of installing the show. It depended on us completing the installation of the domestic space.
- It was my Curator, Hitomi’s idea for me to make the film. I wanted to have dinner with my family in the exhibition space as a sort of social practice thing… and also just as a way to make deeper meaning of this CLose to Home concept that I was working with. Hitomi’s question was, “how will the public know that it happened?” I had already created so much work for the show, it felt exhausting to think about actually creating another one that would be dependent on the exhibition being installed already. I was also excited about the idea tho… my first art medium as an adult was film. I was professionally trained as a Director and I know how to make a film… it’s just something I had not done in a while. Hitomi introduced me to a cameraman (we should name him) and we went from there.
- The dinner and subsequent film is a celebration dinner for my mom. She hadn’t been back to her mother country, Guyana in 52 years and she finally accepted the invitation to return.
- The foods we are eating represent the three main cultures in Guyana:
- African: Metem (short for Mentemgee) is a distinctly Afro-Guyanese food, the word is actually a Twi Ghanaian word. the recipe survived the trans-Atlantic slave trade and their are variations of this dish all over the Caribbean. In general, it consists of ground provisions cooked in a coconut stew and fish or meat dish to compliment it on the side.
- Indian: Indo-Guyanes curry and roti. Indian people came to Guyana through indentured servitude and their dishes are eaten all over the Caribbean. Learning to make a good roti as a predominately Afro-Caribbean person results from an exchange with an Indian friend.
- Amerindian/ indigenous: Pepperpot is the national dish of Guyana. It is a meat dish cooked in a Cassava stew. Guyana has a large indegenous population, and they “don’t know taxes” as one of my guides once told me. That’s a joke which I can’t verify.
Nonetheless, though I will primarily identify as an Afro-Caribbean American woman, my own family has some of all three of these groups of people in our ancestry So, it felt right to have these dishes on our Guyanese dinner table. The conversation went over how food connects us within our own families, how it gives us a sense of belonging and ownership of our own culture and identity, and how food is easily shared with others, allowing us to embody connection and appreciation for one another.
Also, as this domestic interior of the exhibition reflects and is inspired by my Cairo apartment, the Caribbean food is also an ode to my time there and the food I shared with others, even through a social practice project I called Cairo Caribbean Kitchen, in which I made and served Caribbean food to people all over Cairo once a week.
We had conversations opened up about the way colonization affected my family throughout lived experience – the expectation as Caribbean people that we would move to the mother country (England), Canada, or America. It was thought of as inevitable because those who were able (because of class, wealth, education), did.
Set over a meal of traditional homemade Guyanese food, the film is a heartfelt exploration of migration, adaptation, and the ways food and storytelling preserve cultural heritage. Through intimate reflections and shared laughter, Metem celebrates the resilience and richness of our family’s legacy while inviting viewers to reflect on their own ties to home and history.
If you haven’t had the chance to experience Metem or the Close to Home exhibition, I warmly invite you to visit the Queens Museum before January 19, 2025.
Thank you for your support and for being part of this journey. Sharing these stories has been one of the most meaningful aspects of my work, and I’m honored to share them with you.