Black Geographies of Kings Hill Dominica is a practice-based geography and audio-visual arts research project, that combines artistic practices in photography, filmmaking and soundscape recording, with geographic research activities in visual ethnography, autoethnography, semi-structured interviewing and archival research. Visiting the island for the first time in my life in 2024, this combination or artistic practices and research has come about as a means of creating critical dialogues around notions of home, heritage and belonging. A key aim of combining artistic practices with research activities is to allow this body of work to raise awareness of Dominica’s Black Geographies amongst both public and academic audiences. Thus in attempt to raise people’s awareness and inform them of the beauty and serenity that makes Dominica the special place that is, this project’s multifaceted and developing body of artwork and research draws on yearly visits made to Kings Hill Dominica between 2024 – 2029. Kings Hill is also the locale that my family have called home since the late 1950s and it is where I stayed the first time I visited the island for one month in the spring of 2024.
This locale was named in honour of the monarch of the day King George III and part of this hill (Morne Bruce Viewpoint) was used as the location of a British military garrison. At the foot of Kings Hill resides a catholic cemetery, a savannah and Dominica’s National Botanic Gardens, from which you can walk into Roseau, Dominica’s capital city. Prior to being a locale occupied by the botanic gardens which are usually spaces associated with green imperialism and colonialised inceptions, the 44 acres of land that makes up the gardens were previously a part of the Bath and Rose Hill sugarcane estate and former plantation.
Whilst initially focused on interrogating my own experiences of diasporic subjecthood, this project also engages with Dominican’s ideas relative to the poetics of Caribbean landscapes alongside their experiences and memories they associate with open natural spaces like the National Botanic Gardens. Dominica’s original name is ‘Waitukubli’ which means ‘tall is her body’ and this name was bestowed upon the island by the indigenous Kalinago people. These photographs serve as a means of visually attending to Dominica’s poetics of landscape, and the locale of Kings Hill. They are also a means of introducing you to the enlivened Black Geographies of Kings Hill Dominica, thereby acting as a small window into this developing body of work. Please do enjoy and make sure to watch the super 8 film and listen to the soundscapes featured in the project. Many thanks for reading and keep an eye on the space for future developments.
