Samantha Box: Caribbean Dreams

Samantha Box is a Jamaica-born, New York-based photographer. Her newest body of work, created over the last six years, explores the concept of diaspora: the dispersion of a people from their original homeland. Of Black, Jamaican, and South Asian Trinidadian heritage, Box mines her personal experiences of displacement, migration, and the search for new homes in unfamiliar places. What happens, Box asks, when a person crosses a border? Which parts of their identity and culture do they retain, and which parts do they renegotiate?​​

These questions are at the heart of “Samantha Box: Caribbean Dreams,” which features over 60 photographs and a mixed-media installation. As Box has explained, “to be in diaspora is to be engaged in the act of constantly fabricating worlds.” As a result, her photographs—a mixture of self-portraiture, landscape, and still-life—often feel difficult to pin down, as if they are in the process of falling apart and coming together anew. In the spirit of montage and collage, her images have a reoccurring cast of characters remixed from one frame to the next, including family heirlooms, houseplants, and postcards. Here, objects and bodies slip between places and times, real and imagined landscapes, presence and absence. 

The forms Box represents are always in flux, restlessly reappearing and transforming. Throughout, Box provides glimpses into the artist’s studio, revealing the artifice of images, particularly those that perpetuate the myth of a Caribbean paradise.​​

Box holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College. Her work has been widely exhibited, notably in group shows at the Houston Center of Photography, the DePaul Art Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, and the International Center of Photography; as well as a recent solo-show at Light Work in Syracuse. She has been in residence at Light Work and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and has been awarded fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Silver Eye Center of Photography, and En Foco Inc.

Featuring recent and new work, “Samantha Box: Caribbean Dreams” is the artist’s first museum solo exhibition, showcasing the breadth and diversity of her photographic practice. In recent years, Box has expanded her work into multi-media sculptures, culminating in her Portable Homelands series. For the first time in this exhibition, Box will explore this series as an installation.

This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Mia Laufer (formerly Des Moines Art Center), Dr. Orin Zahra (National Museum of Women in the Arts), and Erica N. Cardwell, as well as a conversation between Box and renowned Dominican artist Firelei Báez. A concurrent exhibition, “Samantha Box: Confluences” is at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., Nov 20, 2024 - Mar 23, 2025.

Credit: Overview from museum website