Table, Manors is a developing body of work by Hamilton-born painter Kareem-Anthony Ferreira. The works in Table, Manors reimagine moments from his Trinidadian family members’ lives, focussed around the dinner table. The images and structures reference and display preparing, serving, regarding, and eating food produce a rich exploration of not only Ferreira’s memories, but moreover the broader thematic of colonialism in the Caribbean. Ferreira’s painterly style recalls the composition and lighting of vernacular photography, often catching subjects mid-gesture and from a high angle.

Their eyes are widened and look toward the viewer, while their faces glint with the bright light of the camera’s flash. These compositions, pulled from actual family photographs collected by the artist, is in productive tension with the materiality of his paintings. Paired with these paintings are a collection of readymade sculptures which he has carefully curated. Collected are a variety of chairs from the place setting of different homes that are then reupholstered with hand printed fabric printed with reimagined island prints. Both these paintings and sculptures incorporate various print, collaged or textural motifs inspired by the environs surrounding his family’s home.

Simmering beneath the surface of Table, Manors are the vestiges of European colonialism still deeply embedded within Caribbean culture, including within food and dining customs. While Ferreira’s practice at large often takes on the afterlife of the British occupation of Trinidad, this body of work specifically explores the “table” and the “manor,” the latter phrase evocatively recalling the term “manner,” as in managed comportment, as well. As Ferreira explains, the inclusion of fine china, elaborate dining room furnishings, and table decorations are colonial imports that have become an entrenched sign of civility in Caribbean households. But what most interests Ferreira are moments that break that script: a child feeding her father; a group of bodies gathered around, rather than seated at, a table; an ad-hoc meal of finger foods. Table, Manors is an exhibition built on the bedrock of such moments of communal excess and joy.