Colonial Debris-Shanty Town
Tatum’s series of images assume the serial format of reproducible posters, invoking through its title the various psychological and material legacies of colonialism within a Caribbean context. For the artist, this residual ‘debris’—keepsake items, documentary imagery, and souvenir trinkets—serves to perpetuate entrenched narratives around Caribbean identity, reflecting the ways in which this visual material is ultimately perceived and interpreted through the voyeuristic lens of the tourist gaze. Deploying a sophisticated visual vocabulary, Tatum offers an insightful commentary on the commodification of island cultures whose true nature is all too often misunderstood.
About the Artist
Simon Tatum
b. 1995
Simon Tatum is a mixed-media artist from the Cayman Islands, based in Tennessee. He received his Bachelor of Art degree from the University of Missouri, USA in 2017, and his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture and Expanded Media from Kent State University, USA in 2021. Tatum’s thesis showcase titled the Romantic Caribbean featured at the Kent State University’s CVA gallery in March 2021 and he has held a solo exhibition at NGCI titled Looking Back and Thinking Ahead (2017). In addition to this, Tatum’s work has featured in numerous NGCI group shows such as tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), Speak to Me (2016), Mediating Self (2017), Upon the Seas (2017), Revive: Contemporary Caymanian Craft (2017), Tropical Visions (2019) and Thatch Roofs and Ironwood Posts: The Art and Artistry of the Caymanian Home (2024). International group exhibits include, Arrivants: Art and Migration in Anglophone Caribbean World at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (2018), Open Air Prisons at LACE Gallery, Los Angeles (2016) and Sense of Place at Spinnerei Halle 18 in Leipzig, Germany (2018). Tatum was honoured in 2016 with an international travel grant from NGCI to attend the Caribbean Linked IV residency programme in Oranjestad, Aruba. Moreover, he was also the first graduate scholar sponsored by the Peter N Thomson Family Foundation in Grand Cayman to pursue a graduate programme. Today, Tatum’s practice loosely follows Du Bois’s message of double consciousness, which described a feeling of in-betweenness towards mixed cultural heritage. The works he creates are relevant to his interests in colonial narratives, tourism, and his personal identity as a mixed-race Caribbean male who grew up negotiating foreign expectations of cultural aesthetics.
