American Herstory: Diaspora, Identity, and Resistance in the Art of Samantha Box

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C. is the world's first museum entirely dedicated to promoting women's art, with a collection spanning centuries of artistic production—from Artemisia Gentileschi, considered by many the first great female artist in history, to 20th-century figures such as Leonora Carrington, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Louise Bourgeois, up to contemporary artists like Nan Goldin and Sonya Clark.

Officially founded in 1981, the museum's mission is to bridge gender inequalities in the art world, providing a dedicated space for female artists of all periods and nationalities. Currently, the NMWA is hosting the exhibition Samantha Box: Confluences (until March 23, 2025), a solo show dedicated to the Bronx-based contemporary artist Samantha Box, born in 1977 and of Black Jamaican and South Asian Trinidadian heritage. Through the medium of photography, Box explores identity-related themes connected to race, gender, and the diasporic community.

Samantha Box, Multiple #3, from the series “Caribbean Dreams,” 2018; Archival inkjet print, 36 x 45 in.; Courtesy of the artist; © Samantha Box

The exhibition is built around two of the most significant series of her career: The INVISIBLE Archive and Caribbean Dreams. Presented as two distinct yet complementary moments, these works converge in their thematic core: the reimagining of diasporic identity through photography.

The INVISIBLE Archive emerged in 2005, during Box's studies at the International Center of Photography. With these images, the artist portrays the reality of young LGBTQIA+ homeless individuals living in the Sylvia's Place community, a shelter in New York. One of the most moving photographs in the series (Cocco visits her mother’s grave, 2007) depicts a young woman sitting beside her mother's gravestone. This scene encapsulates the painful experience of someone, like her, caught between the foster care system and life on the streets, highlighting the tragedies that often mark the stories of those living on the margins. Box uses documentary photography as a means to tell the stories of struggle, suffering, and resilience among marginalized individuals. Far from the romanticism of an external gaze, the artist immerses herself in the reality of her subjects, overcoming the distance between photographer and subject.

Samantha Box, Cocco visits her mother’s grave, from the series “The Shelter, The Street,” 2007; Archival inkjet print, 17 x 22 in. sheet; Courtesy of the artist; © Samantha Box

In 2018, Samantha Box made a significant shift, moving away from documentary photography to explore a more symbolic and conceptual language. With Caribbean Dreams, the artist reinterprets the genre of Flemish still life to reflect on colonial history and the commodification of Caribbean cultures. The compositional elements typical of 17th-century still life take on new meanings: foods and objects transform into tools for denouncing colonialism and its consequences on the present.

A prime example is The Jamaican National Dish, which explores the commodification of exported food products, offering a reflection on global consumer culture. The artist photographs cans of ackee, a fruit native to West Africa, produced by the company Caribbean Dreams. The choice of cans inevitably evokes Andy Warhol's famous Campbell’s Soup Cans, but here food is not just a consumable object: it becomes a symbol of cultural appropriation and resistance. In addition to denouncing the commodification of products, Box’s works also critique the commodification of people: drawing on the genre of self-portraiture, in Mirror #1, she reconsiders the role of the Black body in the history of art, often relegated to the margins of representation.

Samantha Box, The Jamaican National Dish, 2019 © Samantha Box

Samantha Box, Transplant Family Portrait, 2020 © Samantha Box

Examples of works like these fit into a line of inquiry that, in recent decades, has redefined the broader framework of global art. The loss of a center – geographical, conceptual, and identity-based – is a recurring theme in contemporary art, addressed by artists and curators, starting with Nigerian Okwui Enwezor, who, from the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale to the 2015 Venice Biennale (where he introduced the concept of Unhomely), contributed to transforming the perception of African art and the diaspora in art. Recently, Box’s work has been placed in dialogue with that of Iranian-American multimedia artist and activist Sheida Soleimani in the exhibition Home/Land at Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York. In some works, Box, like Soleimani, uses photographic collage to explore themes related to identity and the complicated relationship between origins and diaspora. An example is Transplant Family Portrait (2020), a digital collage in which the artist incorporates fruit stickers, packaging, and receipts, creating an unconventional family portrait that reflects the use of collage as an ideal tool to represent the fragmentation of contemporary experience and its relationship with the digital world. The exhibition Confluences highlights the fluidity of photography as a language capable of crossing genres and traditions: from still life to portraiture, from documentary photography to self-portraiture. Box blends references to classical painting with a pop aesthetic and a contemporary reflection on diaspora. The dialogue between The INVISIBLE Archive and Caribbean Dreams demonstrates the thematic consistency of the artist, who, despite changing approach and language, continues to focus on denouncing social injustices and exploring an identity that challenges the boundaries imposed by history and dominant culture.

Sources: Cerbarano R. (2025, February 11). Il ritorno in auge del collage, «copia e incolla» ante litteram. Il Giornale dell’Arte. https://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/Articolo/Il-ritorno-in-auge-del-collage-copia-e-incolla-ante-litteram Embser B. (2023, May 12). Samantha Box’s Pictures of Dreams and Diaspora. Aperture. https://aperture.org/editorial/samantha-boxs-pictures-of-dreams-and-diaspora/ Lee I. (2024, December 15). Alternate Landscapes of Diasporic Homelands. Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/974812/alternate-landscapes-of-diasporic-homelands-samantha-box-sheida-soleimani/ National Museum of Women in the Arts. Samantha Box: Confluences. https://nmwa.org/exhibitions/samantha-box-confluences/ National Museum of Women in the Arts (2024, December 10). Samantha Box: The INVISIBLE Archive. https://nmwa.org/blog/nmwa-exhibitions/samantha-box-the-invisible-archive/

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