I first met Maureen St Clair in Grenada in 2024 when visiting my late mother’s birthplace.
She had lived there for over 30 years working in education, peace and restorative justice, and as an artist.
A visual artist, writer and Conflict Doula, Maureen is passionate about conflict transformation as a means of liberation, creativity and social change.
Her experience as a white presenting person of Irish roots living in the Caribbean had forced her to do some ‘hard-ass work’ on herself to reckon with her own trauma and shame responses. This experience has informed her own work with other white allies and gives her a different perspective on understanding power imbalances – both internal and external that privilege her.
I found something strangely compelling about the notion of practicing conflict as an inevitable part of a decolonizing creative practice that is done in community. To my conflict-avoidant personality this was both alarming and attractive. There’s a cognitive dissonance to embracing non-violent conflict in collaboration that I attempt to convey as glimpses and glitches of colour and sound at odds with the vibrant fluidity of her artwork.
Maureen acknowledges that this is ‘slow-down work’ that requires taking time to listen and hold others, and showing our good and ugly parts.
It also involves recognizing different capacities to do this within ourselves and in others – knowing when to step away without giving up.
Maureen St Clair https://maureenstclair.com/
Questions:
- How can we embrace conflict as a decolonising force within creative collaboration?
- How can we build our capacity to embrace conflict as normal as culturally-rooted artists?