Mas and Memory: Performing Self diasporic and Art-making
This episode of Saltwater Reasonings explores performance as memory, mas as method, and diasporic art-making as a form of emotional and cultural return. In this reflective and intimate conversation, Adeola Dewis and I consider the possibilities of Carnival, masking, and ritual performance in healing experiences of displacement, social anxiety, and identity fracture.
Together, we sit with how migration and mas converge in her work to shape new vocabularies for self-representation, survival, and transformation. Grounded in Caribbean reasoning, story, and embodied insight, this episode invites listeners to think deeply about performance as a site of research, healing, and becoming.
We explore early memories of Carnival, the impact of living between places, and the ways ritual performance disrupts invisibility, shame, and fragmentation. We also consider the wider cultural and political stakes of bringing Carnival aesthetics into diasporic spaces, and what becomes possible when performance is recognised as method, as care, and as a form of remembering.
What This Episode Offers
A deep reflection on mas as method, and how Carnival performance becomes a way of knowing, healing, and remembering.
Insight into how migration, displacement, and identity rupture shape artistic and personal transformation.
A nuanced exploration of performance as memory, and how embodiment can hold what language often cannot.
A thoughtful conversation on the emotional and cultural labour of living between places, and how mas makes space for return, refusal, and reinvention.
An intimate discussion of the ways performance can interrupt invisibility, shame, and fragmentation, especially for diasporic communities.
#SaltwaterReasonings#MasAndMemory#AdeolaDewis#CaribbeanArt#MasCulture#CarnivalStudies#PerformanceStudies#DiasporaStories#EmbodiedKnowledge#MigrationAndIdentity#PerformanceAsMethod
