The Guard: An Intervention at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society
Published in 2021 by Mare Projects a division of Auttrianna Projects
By Llanor Alleyne and Nyugen Smith
With a Foreword by Auttrianna Ward
Designed by Dominic Skeete, founder of Empryeal Design Studio
In the call and response tradition located throughout the black diaspora, artists and writers Llanor Alleyne and Nyugen Smith combine prose, and poetry to critically engage topics of invisibility, tourism, sites of memory, and value of the arts resulting from their recent collaborative intervention in coordination with and at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS) titled, The Guard. The Guard placed a barefoot Smith as the museum's sole guard over a five-hour period as Alleyne, in her role as "Professional Staff", observed and documented interactions between museum visitors and The Guard. As both participants and observers, the artists took note of their invisibility and hypervisibility as visitors walked through the museum's galleries. The Guard's publication examines what it means to actively inhabit a place rooted in a past in which your marginalized ancestral presence underpins all that is on display. Smith and Alleyne write about the reactions to their intervention as well as the corporeal and spiritual effects of holding space on a site. Deliberately ignored and excitedly discovered over the course of the intervention, Smith and Alleyne offer insight into what it is to be living ghosts with an interplay of two voices made singular by the act of remembering. Each author weaves a line from the present to the past and back again while acknowledging their bodies as interloping vessels of time and possibility.
Book Specs
48pg + Cover
10 x 10 inches
Perfect Bound
Soft Touch Film Laminated cover
Available for purchase HERE