Five Hundren’ Years in These Shoes?
Suckoo Chollette addresses themes of identity, memory, and survival in this installation using the traditional Caymanian footwear known as “whompas” to illustrate the idiom “to walk a mile in someone’s shoes”. In this instance, she is referring to time instead of distance — the 500 years of Cayman’s recorded history. “Walking” along the gallery wall, these footsteps boldly question the viewer’s ability to understand the “authentic” Caymanian experience without a true connection to its historical past.
About the Artist
Nasaria Suckoo Chollette
b. 1968
Born in George Town, Grand Cayman, Suckoo Chollette received a BA in Theatre and an MA in Educational Theatre from New York University. She is a member of the artists collective Native Sons and has exhibited widely both with the group and as a solo artist. An accomplished poet and actor, her work explores themes of female strength and empowerment, race and the repercussions of enslavement, as well as the erosion of Caymanian cultural traditions. In 2006 Suckoo Chollette won first place in the McCoy Prize competition for her painting Maiden Plum, and in 2019 she was the Bendel Hydes award winner in the inaugural biennial exhibition for her work Becoming Again (2019). In 2021 she was also the recipient of a Gold Star for Creativity at the National Arts and Culture Awards Ceremony. Her work is included in the permanent collections of NGCI and the Cayman Islands National Museum, and is featured in Art of the Cayman Islands, the islands’ first formal art history (Scala Fine Art Publishers Ltd., Fall 2016). NGCI exhibitions include: Native Sons’ Fahive (2005), The Persistence of Memory (2011), Metamorphoses (2014), All Access (2015), tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), Native Sons – Twenty Years On (2016), Speak to Me (2016), Mediating Self (2017), Revive: Contemporary Caymanian Craft (2017), Cross Currents – 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), Island of Women: Life at Home During our Maritime Years (2020), Interior and Interiority (2020), Reimagined Futures – 2nd Cayman Islands Biennial (2021) and The People’s Collection – A 25-Year Cultural Legacy (2022).
