Cydne Jasmin Coleby (b. 1993, Nassau) is an interdisciplinary artist from The Bahamas primarily working in digital and mixed media. Her practice centers on digital and mixed-media collages which investigate the transformative effects of trauma, through a personal lens.
My practice meditates on the difficulty in distinguishing between which experiences inform, rather than define, our sense of identity, in this liminal space. Through employing the aesthetics of Junkanoo and wider diasporic practices, I weave in moments of pain, trauma-processing, and the grotesque - mingling with the bright imagery of the manufactured tropical. The resulting images complicate the widely celebrated natural landscape of The Bahamas: idyllic environments can still represent deep woundings specific and endemic to the region. The work serves as a path for me to question our capacity for healing, and of cultivating individual and collective narratives and identity through the intentional centering of deeply personal and formative experiences. There is an under-appreciated significance in fervent, heartfelt accounts detailing the way we find ways to live and thrive and experience this life, and I find value in taking up space for these stories personally and collectively.