Kearra Amaya Gopee
Artifact #3, Terra Nullius, 2019
Installation and single-channel video
Video duration: 11 minutes, 6 seconds
Music credits: Kiss My Feet by Laura Mvula and Remember by Seinabo Sey ft. Jacob Banks
Courtesy of the artist
Kearra Amaya Gopee, a visual artist based in Carapichaima, in Trinidad and Tobago, and Brooklyn, explores how personhood, family, and intimacy are influenced by histories of trauma and spirituality within diasporic Caribbean identity and ancestry in Artifact #3, Terra Nullius, the conclusion to a trilogy of works. Referencing scrying — the practice of foretelling the future through the use of a reflective surface — the interactive work rejects a desire for mere survival, instead emphasizing a future defined by more than one’s needs. Artifact #3, Terra Nullius diverges from an emphasis on care in the form of biological family structure and moves towards care through alternative and queer kinships. Welding the message “make the end you need,” Gopee carves out the space to project a new future.
