Shannon Alonzo

Subterranean Sentiments of Belonging

Subterranean Sentiments of Belonging documents the erasure of 3 murals created over a period of 1 year (2020–2021), on a single wall at Alice Yard Project Space in Trinidad W.I. These drawings were developed as part of my research into the connections between collective belonging and place attachment, as they exist within the rituals of the Trinidad Carnival and was undertaken during my MRes at University of Westminster.

Each drawing was created through the lens of past, present and future respectively and the (futile) act of erasure intended to explore the entangled nature of these narratives. In Trinidad Carnival praxis, time is embodied, nonlinear, and in each instance of a ritual performed or a character assumed, we exist simultaneously in multiple temporalities. The collective consciousness derived from this is then able to transcend the everyday, as we come to a greater understanding of self, in relation to one another and the environment. It was my intention that as one drawing was erased and the succeeding inscribed over the remnants of the last, a form of palimpsest was created, layering the dialogue between each of these narratives.