THE ARRIVANTS
For Checinska, the inspiration of the ‘Windrush Generation’, provides a route into an immersive exploration of the role of dress in the negotiation of geographical, psychological and social borders and the refashioning of identities, or the recreation and presentation of self. Considering dress at the border crossing within the context of the then interdependent colonial relations between Britain and the Caribbean, the artist raises questions about power and resistance, migration and settlement, representation and self-representation, invisibility and visibility, hope and lament, aspiration and expectation, respect for the self and respect for others. These debates inform the exhibition’s three intersecting components, namely ‘the suits’, ‘the customs hall waiting area’, and the ‘stories’.