This site-specific commission is created by Martinique-based artist, David Gumbs. The new innovative Augmented Reality work was inspired by the flamboyant flower that has marked his childhood. The Royal Poinciana, also called flame of the forest, has always been part of the Caribbean landscape and heritage with its vibrant red and yellow bloom from June to September.

Looking through his studio window during lockdown, Gumbs realized how intense and impactful these trees were while they appeared to cover the sky and dressed the ground below. Gumbs also recognized how little he actually knew about its origin. Through the Art Kiosk commission, he began a new research path and found that it symbolizes: rest, pride, and hope. These qualities inspired a new series of chimeras, half flower and half human, rooted into the Caribbean’s storytelling and folklore.

The vibrant colors and the surreal aesthetics aim to bring comfort and joy to visitors while emphasizing social complexities of postcolonial islands and blackness. Symbols like the madras cloths, the traditional houses, the geometric patterns inspired by the colonial plantation tiles, speak to the history of the landscape. The street wear, and the red, yellow, green tank tops, reference U.S and Rastafari influences that exist throughout the Caribbean region. They also reference Edouard Glissant’s « créolité » hybrid and mutating identities.

The red petals carry the blood stains that this resilient population has learn to find shelter under. As the sky rains hearts, the blood sacrifice purifies the body, the land and sea.