In A Small Place, Kat Thompson navigates the convergence of history, material culture, and personal lineage through the lens of Jamaica Kincaid’s incisive text. Inspired by Kincaid’s reflections on the colonial condition and its lingering imprints, Thompson reimagines her ancestral ties, tracing their echoes across time and geography. 

Thompson integrates photography, textiles, collage, and installation to examine Afro- Caribbean selfhood within the African Diaspora. Using her family as the foundation of her work, Thompson tells a universal narrative of the immigrant experience—how histories are carried, reshaped, and sometimes lost across generations. Through personal and found materials, she traces the journeys of those who came before her while addressing the ongoing erasure of cultural memory. By layering archival and contemporary elements, her work preserves and reimagines the visual and oral histories that shape identity, migration, and belonging. 

A Small Place is both a journey and a reconstruction. It is an interrogation of historical fragmentation, a meditation on migration, and an assertion of presence across landscapes that have sought to forget. Through layered imagery and textiles, Thompson binds together what was severed, allowing her ancestors to find their way back—not only to her but to a future where their stories continue to unfold. 

Special thanks to Corporate Museum and Frame and Jamaica House