Our Jamaica
In the Jamaica I keep in my heart, it is important that the women are speaking. It is important that women in my Jamaica have given me words, memories, and feelings. In return, I want to offer them images of the Jamaica that we share.
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Our Jamaica is always in my heart, but if I'm not careful, I'll forget how to get there. I'll lose a part of myself and I'II lose their words and their stories. If I lose their stories, I'll lose their images. I won't be able to picture the women or their stories and our Jamaica will disappear. Maybe it will turn into something else. I'm not sure what and I'm not sure if our Jamaica would survive. I'm not sure if I want to find out what would happen to our Jamaica if I forgot.
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Our Jamaica is replete with courageous people. Our women are unafraid of the spirits who lurk at night in our mountains, our forests, and the dark waters that surround our Jamaica. Our women go into those mountains, those forests, into the dark waters, and they always return. They'll return so long as I remember them. I make sure to remember them returning each time, giving them new ways to come home.
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In the Jamaica I keep in my heart, there are different ways to remember. I can remember faces. I can remember a place, an object, a feeling. I can even remember the sensation of remembering and I can commit that sensation and its memory to paint. I can draw someone who is still in the process of becoming a body-| can remember them in that state. I can thicken the paint and I can add layers to their story, using each stroke to convey the accrual of our Jamaica.
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In the Jamaica I keep in my heart, the women intermittently gather at places on the island. Their gatherings have different meanings. Sometimes they celebrate, other times they mourn. There are even instances when their gatherings are simply a brief exchange of glances, acknowledgments of time passing by. Our Jamaica is a place that holds us together. It is a place that keeps these women close to me. That gives these women access to my eyes, to my hands. They are my voice, so I must remember them.
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- Dana-Marie Bullock
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BIOGRAPHY
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Dana-Marie Bullock is a Jamaican-born interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture, installation and performance art. Bullock's work draws from self-portraiture and familial memory in tandem with abstraction to engage with themes of sexuality, bodily autonomy, trauma, and loss.
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Bullock is currently completing her MFA in Painting and Drawing at Pratt Institute. She is the recipient of the Virginia Pratt Thayer Scholarship 2024, the Schuback Endowed Scholarship 2024, and Pratt Institute’s Ox-Bow Residency Award 2024. Bullock completed her summer residency at Ox-Bow School of Art under the tutelage of Michelle Grabner, Molly Zuckerman, and Brad Killam. Bullock also completed a residency masterclass with artist, Mickalene Thomas and curator, Jasmine Wahi at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2024.
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Following her undergraduate studies in Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Bullock studied Fine Arts with a specialization in painting at The Art Students League of New York. She has received multiple awards at various shows in New York City including Red Dot Winner (best in show) and the Norma Adler Scholarship at the Art Students League, along with media coverage in both the United States and Jamaica. In 2019, Bullock exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica and one of her works is currently exhibited at the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment, and Sport in Jamaica.
My practice investigates the body as a site of cultural identification and material history sewn into the flesh. Working primarily in painting, sculpture, and installation, my work draws from self-portraiture and familial memory in tandem with abstraction to engage with themes of sexuality, bodily autonomy, trauma, and loss.
Using materials with symbolic histories such as chiffon, gauze, lace, hair weft, metal, and found objects—all of which carry historical resonance quietly embedded in Jamaican culture, domestic life, and architecture—I emphasize the female body as an architectural form. In that form, I see a site of strength, comfort, and bravery but also fragility and impermanence.
Breaking away from the traditional painting conventions of a tightly stretched canvas, I examine the medium and abstraction as a genre, capable of blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. My work is typically hung unstretched, given a body, damaged, resurrected, and repaired using varied methods of needlework to stitch together layers of interwoven histories of Western, Eastern, African, and Black cultures within Jamaica.
Ultimately, my work creates a visual language that captures sensations and realities that defy vocalization—further shedding light on objectification, racial and gender discrimination, historical erasure, and medical injustice—issues linked to political concepts like feminism, race, and class.​
