THIRTY7

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THIRTY7 or 37, is an exploration of my observations on Black womanhood in postcolonialism. It meanders along the Belize River, a route of Black Liberation, which is an important vein in Belize’s economic history. It wants to question what this river, the sea and other bodies of water signified to the Maya, before the British colonised, what later developed into the settler-nation-state, that we now know as Belize, Central America.

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It is also a map of coordinates of a 37 year old Black Belizean woman, 15 years making art under the title of ‘artist,’ tracing points along waterways near the places responsible for my formation as a person and a Belizean citizen, whatever that means. I was born in San Ignacio Town in August 1986 and raised in Central Farm, Belmopan, Belize City and Ladyville respectively. It started in 2021 in Caye Caulker, an island in the Caribbean sea, questioning a project I wanted to embark on while studying a visual arts degree in Mérida, Yucatán, México, when I learned about Cri Cri (Francisco Gabilondo Soler) and la Negrita Cucurumbé (1963), in 2022 it remapped by running in loop up and down the steps of the National Assembly building (the literal seat of government), it touches on the coast of the waterway near where the Belize River empties into the Caribbean Sea, in a clearing of mangrove.

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Later on the bank of the Belize River and intends to expand to Guanacaste Park and the Macal River. These bodies of water carry strong currents of both colonial exploitation, extraction and othering and raging currents of anti-colonial attitudes, resistance, and the liberation of Enslaved Africans, also Indigenous people fighting for sovereignty and ownership of their land and water. 

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This is a video performance series which spans being born woman and Black in a postcolonial Belize, grappling with the legacy of misogyny and racism, vestiges of British colonialism, studying art in nearby Yucatán, which is very much connected to Belize via the sugarcane industry, la Guerra de las Castas, 1847 (Caste War) and now with our looming energy crisis with Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), and returning to Belize in 2008, without the visual arts degree, but declaring my status as a visual artist and writer, and how I have tried to carve out a niche for myself in this postcolonial space.

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Persons outside of Belize can tune in via Katie's Instagram page (@katienumi) on August 11th, 2023 at 7 pm to experience her second solo exhibit.