Last year I did a free course on the influence of African interior design. In the introductory lesson, the lecturer showed a picture of a dining room as an example of an interior design style she called Caribbean Modern. As someone from the region in question, I had conflicting feelings about it.
On the one hand, I understood the reference. The floors were beige tiles, the walls were white, there was vibrant art, wooden furniture, some heliconias in a vase. It ticked all the boxes.
But, to me, it felt like a staged villa or AirBnb, especially when I reflect on the fact that my first thought was that it looked more like an updated colonial, tropical plantation style. And maybe that is why I prefer to think about a West Indian design style rather than a Caribbean one.
The Caribbean is such a diverse geographical area that it is perhaps necessary that we acknowledge that there are many different, equally authentic, Caribbean design aesthetics. The tourist-focused villas, the colonial plantations, the vibrantly coloured wooden homes, the maximalist interiors, the beach shacks, the stilt houses, and newer, minimalist homes all are authentically Caribbean.
Or are they?
What makes a style ‘Caribbean’ or ‘West Indian’?
If we have historically French-influenced architecture in St. Lucia because they were once a French colony, does that now make that architecture St. Lucian or is it still French? If we copy styles from Florida or Indonesia because the climates are similar, do we consider those styles to be Caribbean or are they simply tropical?
And, what would then be the difference, if any, between Caribbean and West Indian? Most of the West Indies lies within the Caribbean Sea, so is it a subset from a design standpoint? What are we, as West Indians, going to claim as our own?
I think the beauty of being West Indian is that we are this mix of cultures and that we have retained elements of our various heritages, merged them with elements of the European cultures that colonised us and then updated them with the ideas from around the world.
Maybe that is why I recognised the Caribbean Modern image that the lecturer showed while simultaneously rejecting it. Maybe I was excited to see the homes of my friends and family reflected when she said Caribbean Modern, and was therefore disappointed when I was faced with imagery more akin to the temporary accommodations provided for tourists. Perhaps what I was truly yearning for was an unapologetically West Indian design, rather than a more generic Caribbean one.
But is there such a thing?