Deborah Jack

Lives and works in
(b. 1970 in Rotterdam, Netherlands) For over a decade, Deborah Jack has demonstrated an interest in landscape and elements of the natural environment as holders of historical and cultural memory, particularly linked to the history of slavery and commerce. Salt is a natural resource whose physical processes have strong metaphorical overtones, due to its dual preservative and corrosive capacity. Jack has employed salt in various ways in her work since at least the early 2000s. The Great Salt Pond, St. Maarten figures prominently in Jack’s work, including the installation Bounty on view here. At first glance, the landscape may appear to be the Arctic—the antithesis of the Caribbean locale. The Carib name for St. Maarten is Sougligia, which means “island of salt,” and the resource is one of the primary reasons this tiny island nation was colonized by the Dutch in the seventeenth century.