La Vaughn Belle

Belle considers herself a contemporary artist and has stated she likes her art to speak "in layers."^[2] She seeks to undermine and challenge the European-based hierarchical caste system in the Caribbean, which she believes places people of African descent at the bottom of the social pyramid.^[2] She regularly incorporates colonial artifacts into her work.^[2]

Belle created the video performance “Somebody’s Been Sitting In My Chair” where Goldilocks walks into a Great House. Inside displays several people sitting in a planter's chair. It is meant to reflect the taboo surrounding not being able to touch anything in a Caribbean Great House.^[2]

These feature broken ceramics from China and Denmark that often resurface after it rains in the Virgin Islands.^[2]

Denmark was an active participant in the transatlantic slave trade and greatly benefitted from it, though has never officially apologized. Belle co-created the statue "I Am Queen Mary" with fellow black artist Jeannette Ehlers to challenge "Denmark’s collective memory" about slavery.^[4][5] The 23-foot statue depicts Mary Thomas, who helped lead the 1878 "Fireburn" labor riot in St. Croix where workers in the Danish West Indies staged a protest.^[6][7][8] She sits on a peacock chair, recalling “the iconic 1967 photograph of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party”^[8] and the plinth incorporates “coral cut from the ocean by enslaved Africans gathered from ruins of the foundations of historic buildings on St. Croix.”^[1][8] In one hand she holds a torch, and the other holds a West Indian cane bill (a tool for cutting sugarcane cutting), which the artists state symbolizes the “resistance strategies” of the enslaved people who toiled in Danish colonies.

• Official website
• I Am Queen Mary artwork website