Passé Composé – The Créole in Me

Artists and cultural makers have recorded, interpreted, and imagined our histories so that we do
not forget. Yet speaking about our history—and telling the whole story—is not easy. It asks us to confront difficult truths. To speak about the French influence, impact, and presence in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean, and the wider world is to speak about colonisation, enslavement, social hierarchy, disparities in generational wealth, and the global legacies of imperialism.
But this is not the whole story. To speak of the French presence in Trinidad and Tobago is also to tell the story of us: how we came to be; what was done to us; and the ways in which we resisted, endured, invented, survived, and continue to thrive. It is also the story of how we took what was left behind and made it our own. We reinvented it, renamed it, transformed it, and celebrated it. We created something new. This exhibition emerges from that understanding.