Charmaine Watkiss: The Wisdom Tree

Explore the wisdom, strength and resilience of Caribbean women across generations in this new exhibition by London-based artist Charmaine Watkiss.

Part of the Jamaica Society Leeds Out of Many Festival which marks 60 years of Jamaican Independence, the exhibition showcases a new body of work that acknowledges and celebrates the experiences and contributions of people of Jamaican heritage in the UK.

Being Charmaine’s first institutional solo show, The Wisdom Tree includes a number of her signature large-scale drawings as well as more private artworks and notebooks. Highly symbolic, subtle and poetic, Charmaine’s drawings fuse the artist’s interests in herbalism, alchemy and history. Researching the medicinal and physical capabilities of plants, she has personified a matrilineal pantheon of guardians safeguarding and facilitating cross-generational knowledge and empowerment.

Image: Charmaine Watkiss, The Matriarch, 2021 (detail). © The Artist