My Coon Alchemy Series came about on my trip to the family farm in Jamaica. I came across a trunk that had family photos from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. I was in awe at their stately presence given they were a little over 100 years removed from slavery.

I knew my family didn’t have much and remember fondly my grandma telling me “just because you're broke doesn’t mean you need to show it”. This got me thinking about slaves and their descendants and the pattern of using what is allotted for survival to also create a sense of identity.

Like soul food where you have to put your soul into it to make it palatable because you are working with ingredients that are very low on the culinary totem pole (i.e., chitlins and catfish). Hip Hop music was also created under the same sentiment because kids in the inner city couldn’t afford instruments. I wanted to make work that embodied this alchemist lifestyle. So I enlarged my family photos and I accompanied them with discarded items from the street and antique stores. These works certainly talk so much about me and my life as a Jamerican.

The title of this series pairs coon, an inflammatory word for a black person, with alchemy a word expressing the resourcefulness of transformation. "Doing so I am changing the context of coon from an ethnic slur to a term of endearment achieved by the ability to make something out of nothing. This elevated them (portrait subjects) above their original limitations. I call this gift and curse Coon Alchemy. People of color in the colonized world have always had to use the discarded, and reinvent themselves and their culture, to create a sense of pride."zz

IBN KENDALL