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Annis Harrison
‘Mango is not just fruit, it’s memory’
Artist Annis Harrison sits down with writer Azieb Pool to discuss her latest exhibition, Memory of Joy - Part 2
Interview by Azieb Pool
Azieb Pool: How did your practice start?
Annis Harrison: I come from a family of artists. My grandmother was Swedish‑Jewish, and she was predominantly a painter, but really, she was multidisciplinary. She’d use textiles, paintings, and sculpture. She was a fiercely independent woman. Amazingly, brilliantly selfish with her work. My father is from Jamaica and was also a painter and a printmaker. And from a very early age, I dealt with my emotions through art. If I found myself in a dark place, or a space that I couldn’t necessarily communicate with others, I would close myself up in my house and create work. And that’s always been my practice. Not saying that my practice comes from a dark place because it doesn’t at all, I enjoy spending time with myself through my art practice. I’m immensely social, I love people, and I love talking, but my art practice is a way for me to give myself some time to recover, close the door and stop the world
AP: Sensory memory is one of the key themes of this show. How do you translate sensory memories into your visual language?
AH: It’s about that ‘first bite’ of certain fruits for second‑generation Caribbeans. It’s a celebration of a very joyful moment. Quite often, we have grown up hearing about these fruits. My dad was the son of a farmer, so I always heard the stories of growing up on a farm in Jamaica, up in the mountains. And so when I was there, that first time I put a mango in my mouth after hearing about it for so long, it was such an amazing, full‑body experience. I had never tasted anything like it. I was twenty years old the first time I went to the Caribbean. I met my cousins for the first time, and they picked a mango for me.
And I made an absolute mess of it. That mango was all over my body, it was a sticky, wonderful mess. No one had taught me how to eat a mango, I was just shoving it into my mouth, I couldn’t get enough of this wonderful thing. And I remember then going to the river and washing it off. All my senses were involved.
AP: There’s an embodied joy that jumps off the canvas, the way that you’re blurring the line between fruit and body, it’s very sensual, it’s full of pleasure and desire.
AH: Absolutely. Smell, taste, the juice is running down your hands, the whole thing, and of course, the sunshine. The sensual element is intentional. I’m a woman of a certain age, I’m menopausal, and some women feel like they should go and hide and not exist anymore. I refuse to do that. I’m very much still thinking about myself as a sexual being. It is a political decision. I want to make sensual work now more than ever. It’s quite often men who get uncomfortable about this, it’s mostly them asking me “Why do you always have to put sex into your work?” Well, why shouldn’t I put sex into my work?
AP: There’s something very powerful about the gaze that you apply.
AH: So many people have used our bodies, and keep on doing that, as a sexual titillation. I still see white artists making lots of paintings of Black women’s bodies, because to them our bodies are exotic. But I’ve got a right to, because it’s my body. I have this one painting with lips around the mango, and they are my lips. You can see that there are an older woman’s lips, but they’re still sexual, and why shouldn’t they be?
AP: I really connected with that image. There is something so beautiful in the way the lines on the lips meet the lines on the mango.
AH: So you weren’t uncomfortable with it?
AP: It was initially confronting, which made me pause and reflect. Then I tapped into it as an extension of the joy that you're talking about, whether it’s the mangoes, the lips, or the flesh. I connected with the context of joy as political resistance, particularly in the current climate of heightened racism and the undoing of decades of anti-racist work.
AH: Exactly. Joy is a political weapon. I am saying ‘I refuse to let you control my life, my history, my joy’. Through celebration, we’re standing up against the judgment and the harassment, and refusing to be a victim. Using joy like a weapon, as a form of resistance, saying ‘You will not stop my joy’. That’s what the work fundamentally is about. Recently I felt like there was this warped idea that Black people have only lived in misery, particularly in the past. That’s incorrect. We might not have been allowed into clubs or pubs, so we created our own shebeens, our houses became places where people gathered and shared. When someone arrived from the Caribbean, they were welcomed into peoples homes and looked after. I want to evoke the memory of this heritage.
AP: It’s the archiving of joy, which really comes across as a sense of home, space, and nostalgia that you’ve created with the installation.
AH: I was inspired by the work of artist Michael McMillan, whose work The Front Room is now a permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Home, which built on a whole series of exhibitions about Caribbean diaspora front rooms. The installation is a nod to his work. I’m not recreating whole rooms, but I’m bringing in little hints. The sofa you were never allowed to sit on, the doilies, the plastic flowers, the grip, which is the small brown suitcase that every Caribbean family had, these items are spread out like little islands. Paintings will sit on top of wooden boxes containing fruit. The mango painting will have mangoes in the box, some wrapped in copies of the Jamaican Gleaner newspaper. The mangoes will give off a smell when you walk into the gallery, so all your senses are being fed, by the fruit, the visuals and the soundscape. And you’ll feel the sub-bass the moment you walk in.
AP: Can you say a little more about the symbolism of the sub-bass and how it relates to sound system culture?
AH: Soundsystem culture is another form of joy as resistance. I’m not a religious person, but as soon as I feel that bass, it’s like a meditation. I can feel it physically moving through my body, the sense of release and escaping everyday life. Losing myself in those rhythms. And that’s really important with this project. I saw Linton Kwesi Johnson perform when I was sixteen, and it was a life‑transforming experience. People like him, Dennis Bovell, Augustus Pablo, Jah Shaka, really inspired this project.
AP: So when you’re talking about sound, about the first bite of fruit, about heritage, you’re really weaving together all these strands of resistance and joy?
AH: Yes. The sound is not just music, it’s resistance. Mango is not just fruit, it’s memory. The heritage is not just history, it’s joy. They’re all connected.
AP: And when you bring them into the gallery space, you’re asking people to feel them, not just see them, that’s why it becomes political. The mango becomes a metaphor, but also a practice, the lips on the mango are a refusal to hide and the bass is a refusal to be silent. You’re insisting that joy, memory, and sensuality are not marginal, they’re central.
AH: Exactly. I want you to smell the mango, hear the bass, see the lips, feel the carpet. It’s all senses.
AP: Do you think about the future of this archive?
AH: I think about it all the time. Because stories are being lost. People are passing. If we don’t collect them, they’ll be gone. And if other cultures collect them, they’ll be warped. So we have to do it ourselves. The Caribbean has brought so much culture and joy, you’d think we were a whole continent.
AP: The exhibition is taking place on Sugar House Island, which feels symbolic.
AH: It’s literally where the sugar was refined, which really speaks to the fact that this is not just ‘our’ history, it’s everybody’s history. This whole country is built on the white gold of sugar from the Caribbean.
AP: Connected to that I also wanted to ask you how your family in Jamaica are doing after Hurricane Melissa?
AH: My family comes from the mountains near Montego Bay, so it took quite a long time to get hold of everybody. My auntie lives in Spanish Town. She’s in her early eighties. She was all by herself in her house, she wouldn’t go to shelter, it was a super scary experience, but she was fine. The church up from where my family’s from, that’s totally gone. The hurricane impacted everything, housing, water, hospitals, schools, and it’s going to take a long time for Jamaica to get back up on its feet again. It’s important people don’t forget about Jamaica. This is a direct result of climate change and we’re all responsible for what’s happening.
AP: Do you think joy can survive the climate crisis?
AH: It has to. Because otherwise we have nothing. Even when hurricanes destroy houses, churches, roads, we still have joy. That’s resistance.
Exhibition details
Saturday 29th - Sunday 30th November.
Memory of Joy - Pt 2
6 Sugar House Island,
Stratford, E15
Saturday 29th - Sunday 30th November.
About the artist
Annis Harrison is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with painting, drawing, ceramics, moving images and sculpture, exploring the way in which her personal history and Caribbean heritage intersects with the wider community and diaspora. Harrison’s recent shows include; Reframing the Muse (St Johns College Oxford), Cubbitt Invites (Cubbitt Gallery and Studios) and Duppy Dance, (Quench Gallery, Margate).
Azieb Pool is a writer, senior creative leader and arts strategist, passionate about the power of culture to connect people, unlock hidden stories, and spark radical change. Pool is Director of Creative Ambition at people make it work, and Artistic Director (interim) at the institute of International Visual Arts (iniva). From 2019 to 2025, she led the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in London.
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