Exploring Diverse Representations of Diasporic Homelands
**Exploring the Diasporic Narratives of Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani in *Home/Land***
The intersection of art, history, and diaspora is deeply explored in *Home/Land*, an evocative exhibition by Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. Curated by environmentalist and photographer Zoraida Lopez-Diago, the exhibition offers a profound commentary on the movement of individuals, plants, and animals shaped by empire and historical forces. Through their multidisciplinary approaches, Box and Soleimani interrogate themes of displacement, identity, and the cultural footprints of colonialism, creating a space where diasporic memories and experiences take center stage.
### **Reclaiming Identity Through Visual Altars: Samantha Box**
Samantha Box’s work in *Home/Land* can be described as a reclamation project, using her Jamaican heritage as a cornerstone to challenge narratives historically constructed by colonialism. Inspired by the rich legacy of Flemish still-life paintings, her work subverts these compositions’ traditional messaging, which idealized and romanticized foreign fruits as a symbol of colonial luxury and wealth.
In *Construction #1* (2018), for instance, Box crafts an altar-like photographic still life featuring guavas spilling from a plastic carton, alongside decaying bananas and pomegranates. While these are common staples in Jamaican cuisine, the vibrancy and lushness of the photo hint at deeper layers of cultural memory. Adding further depth, her use of colored, tinted glass as frames creates a glowing visual aura, transforming the pieces into reverential objects. These works pay homage to her diasporic roots while pointing to the extractive histories that commodified and displaced such cultural symbols.
Box also places herself in the frame as an act of resistance. By biting into a guava in *Construction #1*, she reclaims agency, rejecting the dehumanization and objectification that often accompanied colonial representations of Black subjects. This direct gaze and active presence counteract the narrative found in works such as Jurian van Streek’s *Still Life with Moor and Porcelain Vessels* (1665–75), where Black individuals were relegated to the background, treated merely as props in a performance of colonial wealth.
Elsewhere, Box subtly critiques the price tags of essential foods in her quiet yet poignant piece, *An Origin* (2020). It serves as a metaphor for the pervasive commodification of all life forms within the colonial paradigm. A vegetable enshrouded in white lace—a key material in Jamaican textiles—extends a new shoot, signifying resilience and regeneration. Box’s altars, though rooted in personal memory, echo a universal longing among diasporic communities to reclaim what was taken and to reforge connections to ancestral lands.
### **Aviary Landscapes and Exilic Memory: Sheida Soleimani**
Where Samantha Box invokes the Jamaican diaspora through material and culinary symbols, Sheida Soleimani channels memories of her Iranian heritage through a reflective lens of avian symbolism and personal narrative. A bird rehabilitator by practice, Soleimani merges her roles as caregiver and storyteller, constructing layered visual narratives that oscillate between memory and metaphor.
In *Safekeeping* (2023), a chick is pictured extending its neck to feed from a tweezer holding a single seed. The photograph’s torn backdrop reveals underlying textures of snakeskin, adding tension and complexity to the scene. The work implies fragility, protection, and the interplay of survival and vulnerability, themes reflective of diasporic existence.
Many of Soleimani’s compositions are constructed as trompe-l’œil tableaus—deceptively real collages created with layered photographs. These arrangements often include fragments of her parents’ memories of fleeing Iran, blended with found objects from her personal environment. For instance, *Khooroos named Manoocher* (2021) features her father’s face hidden behind paper the color of the sky, while he cradles a chicken among leaves and fabrics. These scenes carry a duality: they are deeply personal yet imbued with universal questions about identity, migration, and what it means to feel displaced.
The use of wooden frames stamped as if they were shipping crates further underscores the idea of displacement. These “suitcases of memory” speak to the portability of cultural identity, with the memories and artifacts they carry marked for commodification or, in some cases, potential release and resurgence elsewhere.
### **Shared Themes: Memory, Diaspora, and Reconstruction**
Together, Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani revise and reinterpret what it means to belong to a diasporic homeland. Both artists navigate the ways in which colonization displaces not only people but also culture, flora, and fauna. For Box, it’s the fruits of Jamaica commodified and re-rooted within personal altars; for Soleimani, it’s the birds, memories, and fragments of Iranian culture carried both physically and metaphorically