Large photographs of artist Christopher Udemezue's family hang on the walls at Recess, an art space in Brooklyn nestled between the BQE and the Brooklyn Navy Yards on Washington Avenue. The portraits are ghostly and bathed in eerie colored light, reflecting the show’s title, “Duppy,” which means spirit in Jamaican Patois. Udemezue, who is also known as Neon Christina, looks at how both national history and family history can haunt us.

The exhibit focuses on Jamaica’s history through the lens of Udemezue's relationship with his mother. She warned him that in the 1970s and 1980s, her home country was dangerous, but Udemezue sees this as a symptom of larger issues that were playing out in Jamaica at the time, explaining that, “ghettos don’t just become ghettos. Oppression creates ghettos.”

Once Udemezue visited Jamaica as an adult in 2017, he found that his mother’s concerns no longer reflected the reality of life in Jamaica: “It was beautiful, it was paradise. I saw a lot of myself as an American-born person kind of judging this Black country and I felt like a fool.”

As Anaïs Duplan, program manager at Recess explained, “so much of what Chris is doing with ‘Duppy’ is rewriting not just national narratives, but also family narratives.” To do this, Udemezue believes that storytelling is critical. “For people of color, storytelling continues to stamp our place in the world in that we were here — it wasn’t just slavery,” he said.

Visitors to "Duppy" experience this narrative as something that’s still being unraveled, because shows at Recess are always a work in progress. While the show is running, Udemezue continues to interview family members and add objects to the space that have spiritual value for his family. “We ask artists to be in the space for 20 hours a week so that you don’t have the experience that you do have at a traditional gallery, which is, you go in, you see finished objects, the artist is nowhere to be seen, and the sort of process behind it is mysterious,” Duplan said.

Udemezue says he hopes his work inspires people to investigate their own lineages and ultimately foster empathy and healing in their own families and communities. 

“Duppy” is on view at Recess through Dec. 21. On Friday, Dec. 20, Recess will have a closing reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.