Exhibition Review by Kevarney K.R.

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Bound Waters – Confluence is a carefully curated exhibition that explores “living water” as both metaphor and narrative thread. It weaves together stories of Caribbean identity—both local and diasporic—alongside folklore and collective memory. Conceived as a meeting point of geographies, identities, and cultural memory, the exhibition flows from the imaginative wells of Richard Nattoo—whose artistic vision emerges from the banks of the Rio Cobre—and Roisin Jones, whose inspiration springs from diasporic recollections of the River Thames. Under the curatorial direction of Ségolène Py, these artists converge to explore water not merely as a subject but as a living archive: a fluid repository of history, memory, and embodied experience that shapes a distinctly Jamaican topography and historiography.

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The central metaphor of confluence is articulated through the artists’ shared Jamaican heritage—Nattoo as native-born, and Jones as part of the diaspora—as well as through their distinct material practices. In conversation, Py noted that the exhibition’s guiding concept of confluence emerged through her evolving relationships with the artists and her deep engagement with the cultural and spiritual significance of water in their lives. Here, water becomes a metaphor for life itself: an ever-flowing stream of intersecting lineages, unfolding experiences, and layered histories. This is expressed both thematically and materially across the 19 exhibited works—ranging from watercolours to ceramics and mixed-media—each one imbued with stories and spirits that ripple across time.

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By using water and storytelling as key points of convergence, the exhibition intertwines Nattoo’s expansive, mythological world-building with Jones’ tactile explorations of metal and memory. Together, their works generate a compelling current of narrative and aesthetic inquiry. For Jones, storytelling is an act of self-revelation—an excavation of personal and cultural memory through which her identity continually unfolds. Nattoo similarly views storytelling as a vital act of cultural retention: astories, he explains, are living entities that evolve with each retelling and disappear only when forgotten or disconnected from their source.

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At the heart of the exhibition’s symbolic universe is the River Mumma—an elusive, spectral figure said to haunt the Rio Cobre near Flat Bridge, luring the unsuspecting to watery graves. Revered among Zion Revivalists as the River Maiden, she embodies Afrikan mythological continuity and spiritual retention within the diaspora, her presence echoing across various Afrikan cosmologies. In the Jamaican context, she is often associated with the Yoruba Orisha Oshun, the goddess of water, femininity, and divinity. Her mythic presence recurs throughout the exhibition, most notably in Nattoo’s River Mumma III—The Golden Comb and Gift of the Night, and in Jones’ Spirited Away and Companion. Traditionally rendered as a mermaid—part woman, part fish—she is reimagined here as part crocodile, invoking indigenous symbols of Jamaica’s landscape, ancestral memory, and mythic imagination.

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Bound Waters – Confluence transforms the Olympia Mini Gallery into a mythic, fluid space—an extension of the River Mumma’s realm—inviting viewers to reflect on the interwoven nature of memory, identity, and place. Through its lyrical engagement with water as symbol and substance, the exhibition offers a meditation on cultural survival, spiritual inheritance, and the enduring flow of Caribbean and diasporic consciousness.