Deborah Jack: Archiving the Past and Present of St. Maarten

Coming from multiple generations of St. Maarten residents, Deborah Jack never saw her family’s history outside of the lenses of tourism or the island’s colonial history. Now, with the island increasingly under the threat of a rising sea and intense storms, the task of preserving the memories and history of St. Maarten’s people is more urgent than ever. For the 2023 Soros Arts Fellowship, Deborah Jack will interview the elders of St. Maarten to create a video archive for, and by, the island’s people. As Jack says, her project, To Make a Map of My Memory: Wayfinding Along Synaptic Topographies, “is really about using the archives of the people themselves and their memory to construct our identity and our notion of who we are as a country.” The 2023 Soros Arts Fellowship is centered around the theme of Art, Land, and Public Memory. Eighteen artists from around the world will create projects that propose bold solutions to address the climate crisis, reclaim and uplift indigenous knowledge, and imagine and build sustainable futures. Learn more: https://osf.to/45DM5oc #OpenSociety #SorosArtsFellowship #StMaarten #SintMaarten #OralHistory