Cydne Jasmin Coleby is a MIXED-MEDIA collage artist based in Nassau, Bahamas.

My work celebrates the captivating complexity of what it means to be Caribbean and, most specifically, Bahamian. By drawing on the aesthetics of Junkanoo, I construct vibrant images celebrating the resilience of my kindred. Named after “John Canoe,” Junkanoo celebrates Canoe’s successful defense from 1708-1742 against European invasions in West Africa. Early Bahamian Junkanoo costumes were made using modest materials and have since evolved into a vivid display of materiality. For those familiar with the festival, my work offers a recognizable homage to Bahamian cultural identity and African cultural retentions.

I use photographic archives as source material to give space to the reality of lived experiences in the tropics, as they exist within fabrications of paradise. I primarily use collage to layer various materials and imagery, merging the familiar paradisiacal visual understandings of the region with moments of pain, trauma-processing, and the grotesque. The resulting images complicate the widely celebrated natural landscape of The Bahamas, highlighting that Idyllic environments can still represent deep wounds.

Grief does not always elicit a visceral response – How it subtly settles into everyday life can often be the most insidious and challenging to identify. My practice meditates on the difficulty in distinguishing between which experiences inform, rather than define, our sense of identity. Through exploring this dialogical space, my work serves as a pathway to question our capacity for healing, cultivating, and nurturing individual and collective narratives and identities.