Gesiye

 Gesiye

Scar Tissue (2026)

This installation is inspired by the Pitch Lake in Trinidad & Tobago, the largest naturally occurring deposit of tar in the world and the first to be commercialised. This site formed at the intersection of two geological faults which allowed oil to migrate towards the surface and be metabolised into tar. The Pitch Lake was most likely created during the Pleistocene epoch and is estimated to contain about 10 million tons of pitch. It has been a formal site of extraction since 1595 when British colonial explorer Walter Raleigh was notified of it’s existence by Indigenous communities in the south of Trinidad. Since then, pitch from this lake in Trinidad has been used as waterproofing for colonial ships and to pave roads both in the UK and across the world. Scar Tissue engages with this rich history as as a metaphor for the Black diasporic experience, reflecting on what it means to be othered, exploited for the building of an empire, and integrated into another context.

All That I Touch I Change is a performance film which reimagines the site of the Pitch Lake as a sentient, shape-shifting being. This work explores the history of this site, including it’s origins and the history of extraction for the purposes of fuelling colonial expansion and building the British empire. Through performance that takes place between Trinidad & Tobago and London, archival footage and footage of the site, this work depicts narratives of grief and loss experienced by the Pitch Lake through ongoing extraction and explores its own agency and power as an ancient and resilient site.

So Will I Turn Her Virtue Into Pitch engages with tattooing as a ritual and an offering to mark a connection with the Pitch Lake. The impacts of hundreds of years of extraction at the Pitch Lake are barely visible, as a seemingly endless supply of asphalt has continued to bubble to the surface. In this film, the process of tattooing with and on the Pitch Lake echo the site’s experiences of endurance and resilience.

Working directly from the archive, Unearthed repurposes a late 1800’s photograph of workers extracting tar at the Pitch Lake during the period of British colonialism in Trinidad, overlaying it with an abstract figure which emerges from the lake and expands past the frame of the image. Archival image from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. (1899). Pitch Lake, Trinidad

Spirit Body Moving I-VI and Spirit Body Moving (Animation) are a series of paintings created with bitumen. The first is a series of figures and the second features 50 smaller paintings which form an animation. These works are informed by the history of extraction at the Pitch Lake and the many forms it exists in and spaces it currently occupies as a result of its relationship with capitalism and colonialism.

Credits

All That I Touch I Change (2026)

Director, Editor, Dancer: Gesiye
Cinematographer: Mikhail Gibbings, Adenine Oke, Gesiye
Aerial Cinematographer: Stefan Chenko
Production Assistant: Kamali Martin, Hamed Maiye

Music by Gesiye and Geoff Clapham

Poem by Gesiye and Chibueze Crouch-Anyarogbu

So Will I Turn Her Virtue Into Pitch (2026)

Director, Editor, Tattoo Artist: Gesiye
Cinematographer: Mikhail Gibbings
Aerial Cinematographer: Stefan Chenko
Production Assistant: Kamali Martin

Archival research support: Timiebi Souza-Okpofabri, The National Archives of Trinidad & Tobago and the University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago.