The African Plant Diaspora

In 2023 I worked at the Lloyd Library & Museum as artist-in-residence researching the African plant diaspora, the movement of food crops across the Middle Passage during the Atlantic Slave Trade and their subsequent cultivation in the Americas. An exhibition there in 2025, titled The Enduring Impact of the African Plant Diaspora, featured some of the drawings and watercolors that resulted from that research as it drew from readings of Caribbean poets like Kamau Brathwaite and Olive Senior and photographs taken during recent visits to the Caribbean. The exhibition included illustrated colonial botanical books from the library’s collection.

Many of these plants fed enslaved, crew, and livestock during the long ocean crossings while the the Atlantic Slave Trade lasted from 1525 to 1888. While most produce was boarded as maritime provisions from Africa or the mid-Atlantic islands like Madeira, some plant seeds were likely have been concealed by prisoners as a future resource. These seeds, along with any leftover ships’ produce, were later cultivated on the provision grounds of the enslaved and helped ensure an agricultural diversity to counter the dominance of plantation monocrops.

The exhibition was inaugurated with a symposium on the subject. Speakers included Judith Carney, Annalee Davis, Mark Harris, Jayson Maurice Porter, Chandra Frank, Domonique Peebles, and Alan Wight. 

African Plant Diaspora, 2019. watercolor on paper, 22”x30”