The Guard: An Intervention at the Barbados Museum

Nyugen Smith standing behind the heavy cell door at the Barbados Museum & Historical Society. Photo: Llanor Alleyne.

In June 2017, I had the pleasure of collaborating with interdisciplinary artist Nyugen E. Smith during his residency at Fresh Milk in Barbados. Together, we staged The Guard, an endurance performance at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS) that unfolded across three key spaces: the Cunard Gallery, the Warmington Gallery, and the old prison cell.

The performance took place over the course of five hours. Nyugen, barefoot and dressed in the loosely formal attire of a uniformed museum attendant, took on the role of “The Guard.” I took on the role of “Professional Staff,” observing, documenting, and moving with him from space to space. In that structure, we embedded ourselves into the BMHS—both as presence and disruption.

The intervention began with a simple premise: to place a Black body in the role of guard and ask what it means to guard a history that excludes you. What does it mean to be tasked with overseeing artifacts of colonial power, to stand beside paintings and maps and staged rooms that erase or sanitize the violence that shaped them?

In each of the three rooms, we explored different resonances of surveillance, embodiment, and inheritance. The Cunard Gallery—lined with oil paintings and prints donated by a wealthy British magnate—offered a kind of formal welcome. The room, unguarded for years, suddenly became charged with meaning once Nyugen entered. Tourists lingered. Children paused. Museum staff offered explanations. I filmed from a quiet corner, watching as his stillness reframed every object in the room.

The Warmington Gallery, which presents a recreation of plantation life through preserved furniture and décor, shifted the tone. The gallery is immersive and ornamental, its intention clear: to give visitors a sense of the domestic trappings of colonial wealth. But what happens when a barefoot Black man appears in its windows? When children turn and gasp, not because they fear him, but because they cannot make sense of his presence inside that display?

Throughout the performance, we noticed how visitors engaged with—or avoided—us. We were alternately ignored, regarded as staff, or silently photographed. Sometimes the children spoke. Sometimes they screamed. Sometimes they asked questions that hovered between curiosity and caution. We did not interrupt their movements. We simply stayed in place.

Nyugen as “The Guard” standing in the Warmington Gallery of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society. Photo: Llanor Alleyne.

In the final space—the former prison cell—the air was close and the light low. This was the most intimate stage. It was here that we felt the weight of the intervention most clearly. The door to the cell still holds its original heft. The room, while restored, feels like it remembers. As Coconut (the name Nyugen uses during his performance work), Nyugen stood beside the door, his silhouette briefly halved by the slats of its frame. I took photos. I stepped back. I leaned in. There was a tension in watching him become partially obscured. In that moment, the symbolism felt almost too clear: visibility, vulnerability, and the lingering shape of captivity.

The Guard was not a reenactment. It was not theatrical. We were simply present. And that presence—Black, still, observing, being observed—was enough to stir discomfort and dialogue. The performance asked: what does it mean to belong in a place that was not built for you? What do our bodies carry when we move through spaces defined by erasure?

As artists, we often speak about holding space. In The Guard, we did exactly that. We entered a museum steeped in a colonial narrative and made ourselves visible in ways that neither explained nor apologized. We did not reenact the past. We reframed the present.

The museum grounds eventually emptied. Visitors moved on. We took off our name tags. We gathered our things. And yet the questions linger: Who has the right to guard history? Whose stories are preserved, and whose are passed over? What is the role of the artist in spaces that ask for neutrality while enshrining violence?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know that The Guard created a rupture—quiet, firm, and unforgettable.