Wereldmuseum acquires Caribbean masterpiece for new exhibition

The exhibition Live the Surreal explores surrealism not simply as a European art movement, but as a global mentality and activist stance. Across different periods, continents, and cultures, surrealism has served as a means of resisting oppression and expressing desire, sometimes for another world. 

The exhibition features work by dozens of artists, including Julio Gálan, Tetsuya Ishida, Renée Stout, Yves Tanguy, Co Westerik, and Roberta Stoddart. Works from the museum’s own collection are shown alongside national and international loans, including masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and contemporary works by Rotterdam-based artists. 

Roberta Stoddart is a prominent contemporary artist from Jamaica and the Caribbean, known for her layered portraits and unsettling landscapes that explore the enduring effects of colonialism, ethnicity, gender, and class in everyday life.

In Sleepwalkers, Stoddart draws on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century genre of the conversation piece: seemingly informal group portraits set in harmonious surroundings that, in reality, normalised colonial power relations. By applying this visual language to a nocturnal wedding ceremony in which each figure carries symbolic meaning, Stoddart dismantles the power structures concealed behind the portrait.
 
Set in a nocturnal, sultry Caribbean landscape draped with Spanish moss, the painting depicts a wedding ceremony. Figures from past and present appear to come together in a frozen moment. Human and animal alike turn their gaze towards the viewer, as if caught in headlights, seemingly asking: what now? The work carries a dreamlike tension rooted in a distinctly Caribbean context.  

At the centre of the painting stands Bertha Mason, the ‘attic character’ from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). In the novel, Bertha, who comes from Jamaica, is reduced to a classic colonial caricature. In Stoddart’s painting, she is given her own story, her own voice. In this way, Stoddart aligns herself with postcolonial rereadings from the Western canon. 

With this acquisition, made possible in part by a contribution from the Mondriaan Fund, Wereldmuseum adds an exceptional work to the Netherlands’ public collection. Although Stoddart is widely recognised in the Caribbean and the Americas, her work has not previously been acquired by a European museum. 

After the exhibition finishes, the painting will move to Wereldmuseum Leiden, where in 2027 it will take a prominent place in the renewed permanent presentation exploring global perspectives on the history of art and design.