Carib s Leap

Caribs’ Leap / Western Deep comprises two complementary films that are shown together as a three-screen, synchronised colour video projection. The films were originally commissioned for the Documenta 11 exhibition in Kassel, Germany in 2002. They were then screened in London by Artangel in the former Lumiere Cinema on St Martins Lane in the autumn of that same year. The film Caribs’ Leap is projected onto two of the three screens, which face each other. It was filmed on the Caribbean island of Grenada, where the artist’s parents were born, and memorialises a historical incident that took place there in 1651, over 150 years after the explorer Christopher Columbus first arrived at the island. For all this time the local Carib Indians fiercely resisted European colonisation, resulting in a temporary truce with the French in 1650 before fighting erupted again and the French triumphed. The last Caribs chose to jump to their deaths rather than submit to the Europeans, an event that is said to have occurred at a cliff in the town of Sauteurs, now known as Caribs’ Leap. McQueen’s film was shot at the site of this extraordinary act of collective resistance and sacrifice. The larger of the two screens shows the sky and its reflection in the shallow waters of the sea. Periodically the calm of the scene is disrupted by a figure falling vertiginously through the air. The figure is viewed mid-flight, never seen jumping or landing. The smaller screen opposite documents the passage of time in Grenada during the course of a day. The film begins in the pale light of dawn. McQueen captures life on the beachfront and the dock where boats pass by. Towards the end of the film the camera moves into a funeral parlour where the dead lie in highly polished coffins. McQueen was inspired to make Caribs’ Leap after visiting Grenada for his grandmother’s funeral; the subject matter of the film is therefore highly personal and elegiac.