Color is not just pigment. It is a vessel of memory, an echo of ritual, and a form of resistance passed down through generations. In the exhibition Chromatic Roots: A Visual Journey Through Caribbean Identity, Culture, and Color, we examine how color functions as a carrier of ancestral knowledge and cultural survival across the Caribbean diaspora. For Black and Brown communities whose histories have often been erased or distorted, color becomes a language that speaks without permission—one that holds grief and joy, exile and belonging, rupture and repair.

Presented as a one-day pop-up experience in Boston City Hall during Caribbean Heritage Month in partnership with the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, Chromatic Roots brought together six artists of Caribbean descent whose works span painting, photography, digital portraiture, and installation.

These artists explore the ways in which visual culture can reclaim histories, reimagine futures, and root identity in the textured terrain of the personal and the collective.

At the center of the exhibition is the solo installation Acquaintance of the Night by Jamaican artist Richard Nattoo, who traveled from Jamaica to present this body of work.

Through the use of draped cloth, sacred symbols, and “living water” gathered from Jamaican rivers, Nattoo constructs a spiritual corridor shaped by myth and memory. His work invokes folklore figures such as the Rolling Calf and River Mumma—not as relics, but as living presences. These figures emerge in his paintings as protectors, witnesses, and carriers of cultural truth. Moving through his installation is not just a visual experience—it is a ceremonial crossing into Caribbean cosmology.