Josué Guarionex

NLE Lab: Intersecting Imaginaries

Josué Guarionex’s Coffee Break maps the transatlantic slave trade, in which slaves, crops, and manufactured goods were trafficked between European colonies, West Africa, and the Caribbean. Considering the history of Caribbean coffee and sugar, the work reveals our silent complicity in the cyclical violence. Guarionex repurposes a coffee maker, a symbol of morning ritual and conversation, and literally ruptures that symbol, crystallizing our quotidian connections to systems of oppression.