Portal is a collaboration between writer Tiphanie Yanique and photographer Stephanie Hanlon to make art do a decolonial magic of connecting descendants to their homeland. Formally, Portal is a series of postcards. This ubiquitous symbol of touristic and colonial gaze is recalled and put instead into service for Virgin Islanders to communicate with other Virgin Islanders. The poems do myth-making work by presenting narrative writing from ancestors and to ancestors using the poetic forms of the found poem, the golden shovel and the map. The photos do the magic of abbreviating time and flattening space using techniques with slow and fast exposures. We also approach this work as mothers. Stephanie, a native New Yorker, birthed her child in the Virgin Islands. Tiphanie, a native Virgin Islander, birthed her children in New York. We claim the VI for our children. Portal serves as a compressed voyage for our children to a Virgin Islands’ legacy.
*Buy one of 175 limited edition copies of Portal, A Book of Poetry and Photography in honor of the 175th Emancipation of slavery in the Virgin Islands. Email stephanie.hanlon@gmail.com for signed, limited edition prints.
Discovering what moves us 