Appropriation Mud Cloth Baggage Cart

Middle Passage
The Atlantic Slave Trade established what is known as capitalism today. There were three stages of trade, in which arms, textiles, and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to the Americas, and sugar and coffee from the Americas to Europe.
The journey slaves traversed from Africa to the Americas is known as the Middle Passage.
I am still emotionally unpacking my identity as a Caribbean and African American woman in these three emotional baggage carts. The trolleys not fully covered in zip ties reflect unresolved emotional baggage.

We all carry emotional baggage. This manifests differently for each of us. Some of us carry shopping carts of pain and bitterness while some of us sport a backpack. How we choose to handle our baggage makes a difference. We have the choice, to let it define us or to let it go and move forward.

My Emotional Baggage Carts are vessels for racial trauma. My baggage carts serve…
- to separate myself from the microaggressions I experience on a daily basis.
- to grant access to grace.
- to create a new possibility for myself, free from the constraints of the past.

This emotional baggage cart is woven with vintage mud cloth from Mali, Desert Camo and gold 850 paracord and Forget Me Not Raffia on gold spray painted recovered shopping cart.