Since the announcement made by ExxonMobil in 2015, Guyana is fast becoming one of the largest pIanetary offshore site of oil and gas extraction. Extraction of commercial crude oil began in December 2019, off the Essequibo coast, northwest Guyana in the disputed ocean waters with neighbouring Venezuela. The artwork Like Gold Dust created during the Artist International Residency at Artpace San Antonio, USA (2019), evokes narratives about everyday survival, activism, economics, and special powers needed for the 21st century.

Its starting point are women’s narratives from two terrains, Guyana and Texas, to explore relationships between environments, activism and negotiating present life. The artwork registers the ‘placeness’ and precarity of life for women of colour. In this way, I explore their presence as socially, culturally and racially transforming their worlds. Wynter suggests that as ‘hybrid-auto-instituting-languaging-storytelling species,’ we may narrate ourselves into an existence of transformation and change. Recognising the slow environmental and racialised violence observed by writers, activists and artists including Nixon, Wynter, Da Silva, Maathai and Saro-Wiwa is vital to reimagine activism for a planetary future. In doing so it imagines Guyanese landscapes as changed spaces of extraction of resources, lives and labour. The work responds to slow, pernicious and persistent violations to the terrain and female everyday life experiences particularly on those disempowered and involuntarily displaced through ecological neglect, corporate greed and the ongoing aftermath of colonialism.