Barbara Walker

I am a Jamaican/German born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1954 (then the British colony British Guiana). My Jamaican family descends directly from slaves brought to the Caribbean from West Africa. Many members of my German family perished during the Holocaust. My Mother escaped to the United Kingdom with the Kindertransport.
I returned to Germany in 2018 after many years in Jamaica operating an eco-boutique hotel and I am once again able to concentrate on my art which has been central in my life since I was a child. In much of my work I look into the traumatic experiences of by both my Jamaican and my German ancestors. I see the parallels of the two tragedies, Enslavement and the Shoah, and I consider what it means to be a descendant of both along with exploring the complexities that come with my duality.
The themes that form the body of my work are both political and personal with the personal more often than not also making very political statements. Sometimes a work is a direct response to an event, for example the murder of George Floyd or the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean. A large body of my work is dedicated to the Goddess and to the destruction we bring down on Her, destroying ourselves in the process. My other main theme is the Memory. Now that the ancestors are passed I see myself as the holder of this Memory and with my work seek to ensure that it is never forgotten. I also look at the question of my own identity.