The Boundary of Light

Abstract

This meditation on diasporic belonging, the limits of light and vision, and the practices people enact to become one with the earth examines watercolors done by British artist William Berryman while he lived in Jamaica between 1808 and 1816. It focuses on depictions of the provision ground, small plots of land enslaved people and their families used to grow food and, ultimately, forge a connection with the land. The author peels back the layers of Berryman’s scenes, looking beyond what has been rendered visible, countering European representations of landscape that privilege vision and light. She contemplates what we cannot see in these images: buried entities that formed a network of power known to enslaved people, engaging Katherine McKittrick’s theory of Black geographies. Through these entities, people of African descent established blood ties with the earth of Jamaica, thus—to use Sylvia Wynter’s term—“transplanting” their culture to the island.