Grants and residencies

Research and art

Black Atlantis

Application summary

The immensity of today’s climate crisis is on the forefront of public awareness. But crucially, its racial history is less known. Black Atlantis is an experimental monograph that explores the ecological violence of the slave trade and its close links to contemporary environmental devastation. Black Atlantis also explores the Nordic participation in the transatlantic slave trade as well as Finnish scientific explorations of adaptation in the face of climate change. The Black Atlantis monograph translate my artistic projects performed at art institutions in Europe, Asia and Africa since 2014 into a book. It expands on fieldwork conducted in Finland, Trinidad, Barbados, and Senegal relating to histories of slavery and climate change. The monograph makes a unique contribution to ecological Black Studies by narrating the scale and historical violence of these crises, remapping the Atlantic Ocean in relationship to Nordic colonialism, connecting slave ships and underwater ecologies.

Black Atlantis, an experimental monograph, explores the ecological violence of the slave trade and its close links to contemporary environmental devastation. The book is made in maritime frequencies. It is due to be published in Fall 2026 with Strange Attractor/ MIT Press, with a preface by Renisa Mawani Professor and Canada Research Chair in Colonial Legal Histories at the University of British Columbia and an epilogue by Denise Ferreira da Silva, Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at NYU. It is illustrated by Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier.

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