I first met Maureen St Clair in 2024 when visiting my late mother’s birthplace, Grenada. She had lived there for 30 years working in education and restorative justice.
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 forced her to do some ‘hard-ass work’ on herself to reckon with her own trauma and shame responses.
I was intrigued by the concept of ‘normalizing conflict’ and practicing it in community as an inevitable part of a decolonizing creative practice, despite my own conflict-avoidant personality.
Maureen acknowledges that this is ‘slow-down work’ that requires taking time to listen and hold others, but also to recognize different capacities within yourself and others – knowing when to step away without giving up. It means being committed to showing your beautiful and ugly parts.
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 from village life on the island at odds with the vibrant fluidity of her artwork.