salt.

There are some dark and disgraceful parts of history that modern society tries to forget about. One such thing is slavery. For the descendants of slaves, it isn’t something that happened a long time ago and is now irrelevant. It’s present in their everyday consciousness, their roots are entwined in its horrific past. Artist and performer Selina Thompson wanted to show just how exhausting carrying history can be. So in February 2016, she boarded a cargo ship and retraced one of the routes of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle – from the UK to Ghana to Jamaica, and back again. She describes her experiences in salt., playing at Arts House as part of the Next Wave Festival.

Written, designed, performed and directed by Thompson, salt. is evocative and powerful, oscillating between performance poetry as she recounts her horrific odyssey and raw physicality as she smashes a large block of salt with a sledgehammer. Exertion is important in her performance, reminiscent of the brutal work slaves were forced to do. And it demonstrates how difficult and demanding the trip was.

Thompson’s prose is evocative; she transports you onto that ship right alongside her. Her work focuses on the complicated politics of identity and how this defines our bodies, lives and environments. As an adopted black woman hailing from the UK but with Jamaican roots, Thompson ticks a lot of minority boxes. She describes salt. as excavating a wound as apposed to trying to heal it.

salt. is gripping, powerful and intense. Although it’s uncomfortable at times, it’s also, quite surprisingly, humourous in parts as well. It’s a show about ritual, subtle- and not-so-subtle racism, black diaspora and how complex identity can be. It’s a confronting story and Thompson’s strength in telling it is profound. She says, ‘anything dead coming back to life hurts. The right amount of salt in a wound heals’. The scars of history stay with their cultures for centuries, if not longer. salt. highlights that it’s not up to someone else to say when they should be forgotten.

salt. 
Next Wave Festival
nextwave.org.au/events/salt