VISUAL ARTIST LISANDRO SURIEL
Lisandro
Suriel
Photographer & artistic researcher · Saint Martin, Caribbean · the Ghost Island project
A photographer of magic realism, mapping the Black imagination of the Atlantic World. His images excavate what the archives never held: folklore, spirits, and the memory of who we once were.
A documentary of imagination.
Lisandro Suriel is a photographer of magic realism and an artistic researcher, born and raised in Saint Martin, and based there again since the start of the pandemic. His project, Ghost Island, is a documentary of the Black imagination of the Atlantic World, a search for Black Caribbean and Atlantic identity beyond the scope of coloniality.
The return home was a blessing for the work, letting him immerse fully in the realms of magic that the project moves through. Before that, he began the field research in Bahia, Brazil, continued it in New Orleans, and held a Tilting Axis Fellowship in Scotland, with talks and workshops at St. Andrews University, Glasgow School of Art, and Ghent University.
A childhood without a television.
“Not having a television for the greater part of my childhood prompted me to develop and retreat into marvellous worlds. As a child I always believed that islands were masses of land adrift at sea, and I always wondered what lay underneath.”
“Rather than coral reefs, I thought that the dark patches I saw in the ocean while flying over on a plane were islands under water. I always wanted to go there to see what it was like. What would an under-water mountain look like? What would the sky look like?”
What inspires the work most?
“My greatest inspirations are the stories of ghosts and mysteries of nature told by the members of my community, and the experiences of magic that come with living in a place that engages with that which we cannot see. This is the foundation of everything I do, and the driving force behind my search for Black identity beyond the scope of coloniality.”
He speaks of tales of spirits who appear in the guise of unsuspecting people during the day, while at night they shed their skin to reveal their true form: a smokeless ball of fire flying through the sky. “It might seem crazy to take such tales seriously as research, but as an artist I have the freedom to explore this ancient vampire that ties our ancestral memories to the Ewe lore of Togo and Ghana.”
“The spirits of our ancestors are with us in more ways than we can possibly imagine.”
Never in a studio.
“It is crucial that the space in which I work contributes to the creative process in ways that are spontaneous and unpredictable. I do not go onto any set knowing what the resulting image will look like. I merely set parameters and a direction for things to flow.”
“I enjoy working in nature or with elements of nature, because nature allows for the imagination to breathe. Since I am making a documentary of imagination, I find it very important to allow space for the image to unfold naturally, in symbiosis with the space and the subject.”
“Nature allows for the imagination to breathe.”
What role does photography have in decolonisation in the Caribbean?
“More than merely having a role to play, photography has the responsibility to contribute to this movement. Since the advent of Western imperialism, portrayals of the West Indies have always been skewed for the interest of Western societies. Even today, the semiotics of Caribbean visual representation in popular culture is fundamentally Eurocentric.”
“More than any other medium, it is the primary responsibility of photography to undo its colonial grip on the region’s visual culture. New Caribbean photography may unearth novel semiotics that yield more productive ways to conceive of the self and redefine progress.” Photography’s role, he says, should be to contribute to the visualisation of a decolonial landscape in the Caribbean, to undo centuries of Eurocentric framing and imposed identities.
The reader is invited to consider this same decolonial framing in light of what is currently happening in the Middle East.
Who do you consider an icon of our time?
Grace Jones and Naomi Campbell. “They are both iconic women who have rendered themselves timeless by their ability to wield beauty. This might sound shallow at first, but I mean it in the most profound way possible. These women have taught, through their mere existence, that true beauty is not something you look like, but rather something you are.”
“By the spirit of their beauty, they have never asked the world permission to be their true selves. Most importantly, their presence asks many of us across the African Diaspora to look at ourselves through the eyes of timelessness, and to see the same beauty in our selves. It is this conception of beauty that I try to incorporate into my work: to wield beauty to inspire a rediscovery of self and histories.”
“True beauty is not something you look like, but rather something you are.”
What does wellbeing mean to you?
“As a Libra, wellbeing encompasses balance and harmony. My work is all about harmonizing with nature and learning from her. Many Black and Indigenous schools of thought speak about the importance of learning from nature. Some say that we even came to Earth to learn from Her spirits.”
“A healthy sense of magic in life is a critical drive for existence. Whether you call it religion, or love, or happiness, it is something you feel, more than you can think or explain. It is the reason many artists create in the first place. In many ways, my work is my life and my spiritual practice.”
A practice rooted in not knowing.
“My entire artistic research practice is rooted in not knowing about history and ancestry. As a child of the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, my education was colonial, in the sense that we were only ever taught that our history starts with Christopher Columbus and the advent of Transatlantic slavery. It is my intention to explore Blackness beyond the slave narrative. Western historiography has failed to tell our story, so we cannot rely on it to tell our own.”
“For us there are rarely, if any, records of our past that go beyond colonialism. Often the only remnants of our true history are found in immateriality. And it is this immateriality that I have come to call the Black Imagination: an umbrella term for folklore, forgotten or untold stories, oral tales, superstition, and engagements with the magical forces of nature that speak to our collective memory of who we once were.”
“Ghost Island posits the Black subconscious as a device for reconfiguring collective memory and reclaiming histories.”
Antakly Projects, originally Ninu Nina, has been in conversation with the most inspiring voices in art, photography, design and culture since 2003. Interview by Leila Antakly. Lisandro Suriel’s Ghost Island reminds us that some histories were never written down, only remembered.
All works © Lisandro Suriel. Thank you to Lisandro for the conversation.
lisandrosuriel.com → Instagram @lisandrosuriel →
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Stay curious. ✦
