Caribana and Carnival: Belonging as Resistance and Remembrance

This article examines how artistic practices rooted in Carnival traditions reimagine belonging as a fluid, transnational process rather than a fixed geographic or cultural identity. Focusing on the works of Ken Daley and Collette “Miss Coco” Murray within the Black and Free art series, it explores how these artists transform cultural celebrations such as Carnival and Caribana into platforms for resistance, resilience, and the preservation of diasporic memory. Through a qualitative, multiple case study approach, the analysis demonstrates how visual and performative art function as living archives—sites where historical consciousness, ritual practice, and creative innovation converge to contest colonial narratives and assert Black presence. Drawing on Black Studies diaspora studies, transnational theory, and intersectionality, this study argues that belonging in the Black and Caribbean diaspora is continuously negotiated through embodied performance, symbolic imagery, and communal celebration. By bridging artistic practice with critical theory, the article contributes to understanding how cultural expression mediates emancipatory discourses of home, identity, and freedom in contexts shaped by displacement and the afterlives of slavery.