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More on Jacqueline Bishop HERE

In 2023, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Accra, Ghana. Although I had previously visited Africa, living in Morocco as a Fulbright Fellow, this was my first time in West Africa and a country where my ancestry DNA test indicated direct lineage. The weeks I spent in Ghana were powerful, starting with the drive from the airport where vendors moved through traffic selling goods, much like in my native Jamaica. The market women outside my hotel, effortlessly balancing baskets on their heads, reminded me of my great-grandmother and grandmother, both formidable market women.

At a slave site, I wrapped my arms around myself and thought of the nameless faceless ancestor of mine, who had been at a place like this. I shivered as I thought of her in a horrendous ship’s hold, then imagined as she stumbled out on the other side of the Atlantic balancing a basket on her head. When my market woman forebear arrived in Jamaica, she was allotted a small plot of land to grow food to feed herself and her progeny. In time, she exchanged or sold the excess food grown in weekend markets which led to the development of an internal, and subsequently an external, marketing system. The market woman is one of the most direct links to our West African forebears. She has become my muse.

It was slavery, sugar and sugarcane cultivation which brought the West African to the plantation societies of the Caribbean. In one part of the work that I am presenting here, I have embroidered and appliqued images of Caribbean market women on West Indian sugar sacks [41]. In doing I hope to show that despite the inhumanity of the plantation system, these women maintained agency and autonomy, particularly as needleworkers and seamstresses, privileged positions within plantation society. Black needleworkers not only met the clothing needs of the enslaved but also earned extra income, empowering themselves.

On one of the sacks there is an exchange of knowledge and information between a West African market woman and an Indigenous woman. This work represents the intimate ties between the Indigenous and West African groups that met in Caribbean societies where both shared botanical and medical knowledge. The work Nana is meant to represent the meeting of indigeneity and West African knowledge systems on the island of Jamaica. To illustrate my point, I will tell a little story. One day I was talking to my uncle Moses about my great grandmother Celeste, a market woman par excellence. This time, however, instead of talking about my great-grandmother’s marketing skills, I was talking about her immense knowledge of Jamaican herbs and bushes. I mentioned to my uncle that I remembered hearing as a child that my great-grandmother delivered babies. My uncle corrected me and said it was Celeste’s friend who delivered the babies, but my great-grandmother assisted because, as a market woman, she knew all the herbs and bushes to aid in the process.

I was intrigued.

“What about mid-wives?” I wanted to know.

“They did not exist”, my uncle answered. “What you had instead were Nanas. And that isn’t even an English word. That word sounds ‘African’ to me.”

I was even more intrigued.

The area where my family hails from is home to a legendary freedom fighter and to date Jamaica’s sole female National Heroine. Her name is Grandy Nanny. I began to see where her name came from. For you see Grandy Nanny too was a Nana, a herbalist, a botanist, a woman born in West Africa, transported to Jamaica who refused to submit to slavery and became a fighting Maroon and subsequently a mother of all Jamaica’s children.

Inspired, I conceptualized a ‘Nana blouse’ to honour market women, Jamaica’s botanical legacy, Grandy Nanny, my great-grandmother, and other influential women [41]. Using an enslaved chemise as a prototype, I incorporated lacebark, a material from the Lagetta lagetto tree, native to Jamaica, Cuba, and Hispaniola. This fine netting was used in Victorian times to make various products. Embroidered on sugar sacks surrounding the chemise are herbs used by Nanas for birthing and fertility control during enslavement and afterward. This patchwork marries Indigenous and West African botanical knowledge, reflecting the roots of Caribbean culture.

Through my work, I aim to show that despite the brutal realities of slavery, market women and needleworkers retained some control over their lives, contributing to the cultural and economic fabric of their societies. These women, both historically and in my family, exemplify resilience and agency, shaping the legacy of Caribbean and African heritage.

NEWS

RECENTLY ON VIEW

Jacqueline Bishop in: RISE UP | RESISTANCE, REVOLUTION, ABOLITION

2025 | The Fitzwilliam Museum | Cambridge, UK

February 21, 2025 – June 1, 2025

View the exhibition page HERE