Dr Gabrielle Hosein’s The Botanical Afterlife of Indenture

Honouring Women’s Agricultural Labour is on display at The Art Society. - Photos by Abigail Hadeed

HASSAN ALI
IT’S easy to forget that history can be observed in the real, tangible things in one’s environment. For example, it can be easy to forget that the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway was constructed because the US Army needed efficient transport between bases – especially when sitting in afternoon traffic. Dr Gabrielle Hosein’s ongoing exhibition – her first ever – at The Art Society, The Botanical Afterlife of Indenture: Imaginative Archives, aims to remind us of some of these histories and address some gaps in Trinidad and Tobago’s story.
The show itself is highly collaborative. In May 2023, artists Abigail Hadeed, Risa Raghunanan-Mohammed, Gevena Drepaulsingh, and Chandra Rattan became part of the team producing portraits seen throughout the show. From there on, the team would continue to build and expand. These various contributors were contacted by Hosein to become part of the exhibition.
The exhibition begins on viewers’ left once they enter the door. The first piece that’ll greet viewers is an unnamed, unlisted installation, designed by Melanie Archer, consisting of several tables covered in cloth. Atop these tables, various seeds, pods, and grains are placed in bowls or laid plainly on the table. Among these were: neem, moringa, dhal, rice and more. In a gap between one table and another two cocoyea brooms lean against the wall, sweeping-side up.
The plants included in this installation are all part of a list written by the late Prof Brinsley Samaroo. The list itemises “flora which were fitted into this jahaji bandal” which accompanied labourers on their journey to Trinidad and Tobago. Besides the plants in the installation, Samaroo’s list also names cucumber (khera), mango (aam), marijuana, caraillee, and various other plants which are now essential parts of Trinidad and Tobago’s diet and cultural identity.

Gazing back at photographic history.

After the installation, a series of photographs by Abigail Hadeed showing some of the listed plants occupies the wall. Some of the pictures are captured at different phases of the respective plants’ growth. – an agricultural symbol prominently associated with Indo-Trinidad and Tobago identity – they were “kept alive in family plots and in women’s marketing.”
While saying this, she points to an archival picture entitled Coolie Vegetable Seller, Trinidad – listed as The Exoticised Vegetable Seller on the show’s catalogue – which features a woman in simple, white garb holding a large cabbage. She says that she chose to include this picture because its subject looked to be obviously on her way to or from the market. The seller looked like she was “pulled off the street…like somebody said come and let me take a picture of you,” said Hosein.
Hosein says that after years of scouring archives, she has still found very few depictions of women labouring. When the first group of Indians arrived, there weren’t many women. Hosein says that most women brought over to Trinidad and Tobago, whether they were enslaved or indentured, were brought here to be labourers.
Hosein says that women from both groups found themselves on the land working their own plots and gardens (where they were able to obtain them) and taking produce to market.
Despite being oppressed under different systems, she says that these historic experiences are things we should all be able to identify with – that they are a meaningful part of our landscape.
Besides agriculture, the show also addresses women’s absence from historic archives. As mentioned before, Hosein has hardly found mention of women labouring. Other, less acceptable behaviours are more undocumented than this. Another archival image titled Objectified highlights the sort of media that was commonly produced.

The art of henna.

The image depicts a woman with one hand against her cheek and the other resting on her lap. She’s in vibrant colours, blue and pink, with much fancier patterns and detailing than the vegetable seller. She has on more jewellery than the seller and is made up with pink blush and lipstick. This is the stereotypical “Coolie Belle” – a woman both exotic and docile. The text beneath the image reads, “Colonial studio portraiture was complicit in the production of this highly circulated stereotype to convey passivity, complicity, leisure, luxury, and an unthreatening femininity.”


Because of the general absence of documentation of indentured women who weren’t done up and pictured in the Coolie Belle aesthetic, Hosein thought that she ought to find ways to amend the archive. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to jump back to 1910, snap a couple pictures, and come back home. Instead, Hosein worked with a team to produce original pictures – one of whom was her daughter Ziya Hosein-Livingstone.
Cocoyea I and II, Pooyah (cutlass) I and II and Grass Knife I and II all aim to put the tools of various Indentureship-era trades in women’s hands: the grass knife for harvesting rice; a cutlass for chopping and acts of resistance; and a cocoyea broom, not just as a cleaning tool but as a tool which indentured women often fashioned with their own hands. Downed Tools sees the representation of a more militant woman. The subject, played by Hosein, stares at the camera with half-lidded eyes – her gaze loaded with disdain. One hand holds a cutlass, the other holds her hand up in rebellion.
The exhibition also features a film directed by Nicola Cross, with sound recording and editing by Lyndon Livingstone and narration by Ziya Hosein-Livingstone. The film shows picture and video submissions of people sharing the plants in their own environment which came across the Middle Passage as a result of Indentureship – a demonstration of the presence of botanical histories in our contemporary landscape.

Jewellery that tells stories.

Following the film, there are more images. This time, they’re of mehndi done by Risa Raghunanan-Mohammed. At first, they seem like any other mehndi – beautiful and intricate – but upon closer inspection viewers will notice that the subjects and symbols used in the art aren’t the usual stock. In Mehndi Landscape, we see a sprawling field, flowers, women at work, and a lone schoolgirl walking down a rural road.
Mehndi, most commonly seen in Trinidad and Tobago at Indo-Trinidad and Tobago weddings and around Divali-time, is commonly used for decorative, beautifying purposes. Generally speaking, it’s not conceived of as an archival medium. There are some very practical reasons for this: most notably, both the ink and the medium (skin) are temporary. The pictures in the show will go on to be archival but the henna will leave.
Around cultural holidays in Trinidad and Tobago, people of all ethnic groups will wear the appropriate garb (if they feel so moved). We view this as an essential part of being from Trinidad and Tobago. The henna, here, functions similarly: it’s a way of wearing one’s history – specifically these untold stories – as proudly as we engage in lighter forms of remembrance. Hosein says that in her time researching henna for the show, she was unable to find henna which attempted this style and story.
Keeping with the theme of temporary art, a set of 11 temporary tattoos designed in collaboration with Portia Subran hang on the wall. These tattoos are references to godnas, “tattoos once required of Hindu brides upon marriage.” The designs, however, do not follow this bridal path. Instead, they memorialise women of labour: one is a milk-seller; another tattoo has the scales which Subran’s grandmother used to weigh goods.
Mitchum Weaver created a silver bajuband, designed by Hosein. The bajuband, Hosein says, continues the story of that same schoolgirl walking down the rural road. She says the path the school was also a pathway out of labouring for women. The band features rice, women in militant positions (one with a cutlass raised, another with her fist raised), and a book. After education comes advocacy, both personal and societal.

A photo of the sacred tulsi plant. - Abigail Hadeed

Other pieces include: a coloured-rice Rangoli by Richard Rampersad and jahaji bandals (which were part part of the installation) which were created in collaboration with Lina Vincent, Gaurav Maurya, Dhanya Kolathur and Setika Singh.
Ultimately, Hosein is writing women into the archive where they had previously been erased or omitted. Though investigation and imagination, she is hoping to share truths about the characters of those women who preceded those of today. She refers to her practice, specifically this show, as an example of post-indenture feminism. A very important part of being post-indenture is women’s movement towards greater self-determination.
This is something all Trinidad and Tobago can understand. Debates about slavery and indentureship, especially those which aim to put both on opposite ends of a scale, tend to drive separation between our major national ethnic groups. For all the differences in the these twin systems which birthed Trinidad and Tobago, the commonalities tend to be overlooked. Hosein acknowledges that the exhibition lives primarily in the language of the Indo-Trinidad and Tobago experiences and aesthetics. Simultaneously, she insists on Indentureship not just as “what brought Indians” but also as a formative process which shaped our land – an phenomenon essential to the creation of Trinidad and Tobago as we know it.
So next time you suck a mango or drink tulsi tea: remember where it came from; and most importantly, remember that it’s a part of your Trinidad and Tobago. The Botanical Afterlife opened at The Art Society on June 10 and will continue until June 21. The The Art Society can be found on Jamaica Boulevard and St Vincent Avnuee, St James. It’s open from Tuesday to Saturday between the hours of 12 pm to 6 pm.
Hosein, 51, is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development studies. Since 1997, she’s been involved with rapso, spoken word, building Caribbean feminist movements, and writing on Indo-Caribbean feminisms. She’s a prolific writer and editor. Her column Diary of a Mothering Worker has been around since 2012 and currently calls Newsday home. She received the National Medal for the Development of Women (Gold) in 2022. (Source:  Newsday, June 14, 2025).