Simon Benjamin

Errantry, 2021

Two-Channel HD Video with Audio

Duration: 11 mins

Combining a two-channel video, atmospheric sound, and voice-over, Errantry evokes the act of wandering between subjectivities, localities, imaginaries, real and fictionalized worlds. Shot on location on the south coast of Jamaica with fisherman and painter Tommy Wong, the film centers the polyphonic rhythms of the coastal space, the surrounding Caribbean Sea, and the life sustained by them.

Bio

Simon Benjamin is a Jamaican multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker based in New York whose practice considers how the past ripples into the present in unexpected ways. Using the sea and coastal space as frameworks, his current work explores how lesser-known histories and colonial legacies impact our present and contribute to an interconnected future. 

His work has been included in exhibitions and screening internationally, including Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania (2023),  Baxter St. CCNY, New York NY (2023); documenta 15, Kassel, Germany (2022); Kingston Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2022); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Governor’s Island, NY; Third Horizon film Festival, Miami, FL (2022); trinidad+tobago film festival, Trinidad and Tobago (2021); NYU Gallatin at Governors Island, New York, NY (2021); The 92nd St. Y, New York, NY (2020); Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York, NY (2019); the Ghetto Biennial, Port Au Prince, Haiti (2018); Jamaica Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica (2017); New Local Space, (NLS) Kingston (2016); and Columbia University, New York, NY (2016).