Homeland is a visual album and performance piece that centres family, love, culture and belonging. Featuring field recordings of nature and environmental sounds, human interactions and eavesdropped conversations that were all documented over years of family visits to the island of Barbados. With tales of longing, belonging, the power of rituals, and the seeking of spiritual guidance from ancestors that leads to healing.

Homeland will be a fluid performance incorporating costumes, stillness and movement. The visual representation will come in the shape of projected digital collage and experimental videos. The stage set will include an altar, a sampler, acoustic instruments, and the aroma of burning herb bundles which are often used in ancestral rituals. 

The show opens with the artist seated behind an altar of lights, stones, bells, feathers, plants, and burning incense. The ancestor altar is a space of coexistence between the living and the dead, that holds photos of grandmothers and aunts, alongside images of black, powerful inspirations, such as Josephine Baker & Nina Simone.

Behind the altar, a screen depicts a commanding scene of a black woman, wearing flowing white garments, running through trees with purpose. The dark forest is illuminated by moving spotlights that track her on her search, are they leading the way or hindering and blinding her?

The woman sits at the altar among the meaningful artefacts behind an SP404 sampler. Bird song fills the air as a voice asks, “Hello, can you help me?” The sampled and manipulated sounds of bird wings flapping, angelic choral harmonies, a low humming drone and a steady bass drum create a tension that underscores the soul-stirring lyric “I’m trying to find my ancestors”.   

Here begins a journey that challenges and soothes the soul with lyrics and melodies that elicit evocative, spiritual scenes that transcend our physical world. Ritualised ancestral dance and movement engage with the ancestors and ask them to guide and heal the living.