Description
Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. In her studio-based practice, she makes images and objects that explore her intersecting diasporic Caribbean histories and identities. She has exhibited this work at the Andrew Freedman House (2020) and the Houston Center of Photography (2019), and it was the focus of her residency at the Center of Photography at Woodstock in August 2021. In the series Constructions (which is part of the body of work, Caribbean Dreams), forms restlessly reappear and transform—bodies multiply, the fruit becomes seedlings, tablecloths become veils—in intricate, tense compositions. Formal portraits of seedlings, lit with disorienting grow-lights, prompt consideration of methods of how the transplanted survive, while produce stickers and packaging highlight global currents of the commodification of culture, food, and people. By intermittently exposing the contours of the studio, Box reveals its artifice and underscores the historic use of this space in creating the myth of a Caribbean paradise.
