Above War-Ta, co-imagines the Caribbean’s history through the lens of Hindu mythology. The work engages with the Caribbean’s complex entanglement of histories, religions, and ecologies by weaving together narratives of loss, rebirth

The installation maps the Samudra Manthan—the churning of the ocean in Hindu cosmology—alongside the historical Triangle of Trade. This parallel frames the violent circulations of empire, trade, and labor as a prolonged cosmic churning, where through the turbulence emerge both poison and the goddess Lakshmi, symbol of wealth and renewal. In this dialogue, Above War-Ta interprets the Caribbean’s colonial past as an ongoing process of creation entangled with destruction—where the quest for wealth produced ecological ruin, and yet, new cultural and spiritual forms.

The triptych reimagines colonial history as a dynamic negotiation among forces of creation, preservation, and destruction—echoing the triadic cosmology of the Hindu Trimurti in the  Samudra Manthan. Within this framework, Indigenous, enslaved, and indentured peoples are not passive subjects of empire but co-creators of cultural continuity and transformation. Their practices of survival, ritual, and ecological adaptation are read here as forms of decolonial world-making that contest the logics of the coloniality. Conversely, colonial regimes sought to impose order through extractive economies and environmental domination, producing cycles of both material accumulation and ecological collapse.

Above War-Ta positions the Caribbean as a cosmological and ecological crossroads—a site where histories of spiritual belief, labor, and environment converge in cycles of destruction and renewal. Drawing on decolonial methodologies of co-imagining and relation, the work seeks to reconstruct Caribbean narratives not through linear historiography but through layered temporalities of myth, memory, and environment.

The creative process itself operates as research through narrative building, assemblage, and participatory movement. The triptych—three canvases each measuring 4 ft x 8 ft—forms an immersive environment in which the spiritual and material worlds intersect. Audience members move through the panels, experiencing shifts in scale and perspective that mirror the oscillations between human and divine realms. The integration of augmented reality (AR) invites viewers to encounter the paintings through their phones, revealing alternate layers of imagery and sound that situate the work in “different times and places.” This use of AR extends the installation beyond physical space, creating a dialogic interface between ancestral cosmology and contemporary digital seeing. In doing so, Above War-Ta performs visual research into how Caribbean cosmologies might be reimagined as living, relational systems that inform ecological and political futures.