Charles Campbell

Jamaican-born, Victoria-based CHARLES CAMPBELL has been working over the past three decades as an artist, curator, writer, educator, and organizer. His multidisciplinary art practice encompasses a range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. The title of Campbell’s ambitious new sculptural and sound installation Maroonscape 3: Finding Accompong (2021) refers to the historical village of Accompong in Cockpit County, Jamaica where in the 18th century Maroons and the Indigenous Taino people fought for and maintained their independence from Spain and Britain. The form of the work recalls the Kindah Tree, under which the Maroon leader Cudjoe is said to have united his people in resistance against the European powers. In evoking these historical references, Campbell’s work imagines a site of contemporary possibility, healing, and regeneration for Black communities within and in the face of Canada’s colonialist context of white supremacy and racism.