Jasmine Thomas-Girvan's Fugitive Pathways Explores Maroon Heritage

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, a Trinidad and Tobago-based artist born in 1961 in Saint Andrew, Jamaica, combines sculpture, folklore, and material sensitivity to explore the multiple heritage of Jamaican Maroons. Her recent solo exhibition 'Fugitive Pathways' (2024) at New Local Space (NLS) in Kingston, curated by Rianna Jade Parker, delves into the complex legacy of the Maroons, informed by time spent in Maroon Town within the Cockpit Country protected area. Thomas-Girvan, who earned a BFA in jewelry and textiles from Parsons School of Design in New York, creates assemblages that function as living archives and spiritual instruments for remembrance and repair. Works like 'Resistance Science' (2024) use shadow play, suspended forms, and delicate engravings to evoke Anansi, the West African trickster, and the tension between opacity and revelation. Her materials—driftwood, cables, gourds, precious metals, handmade paper, feathers—are chosen for resonance, not just aesthetics. Thomas-Girvan is the only artist to have twice received the Aaron Matalon Award (2012, 2017) from the National Gallery of Jamaica, and also won the Commonwealth Foundation Arts Award (1996) and the Institute of Jamaica's Silver Musgrave Medal (2014). Her practice draws on poems by Olive Senior and philosophy of Kamau Braithwaite, and includes exhibitions such as 'Window on Memory' (Cohen Gallery, Rhode Island, 2023) and 'Bathed in Sacred Fire' (Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, 2021-2022).