Closing the Circle: DECOlonial Feelin’ Symposium Ends With Ethereal Performance Walk on St. Croix

The dECOlonial Feelin’ Symposium, was an invitation to explore art, language, philosophy, and anthropology through the lens of land, wind, water, and fire, that came full circle on St. Croix with a powerful final event — La Vaughn Belle’s performance art walk through downtown Christiansted Sunday entitled “Out of the Sunken Mist of Our Desire.”

Beginning on St. Thomas over the summer of 2024 and continuing in Atlanta that September, the series sought to unravel colonial frameworks and center the Virgin Islands as a site of deep historical, economic, and cultural study — not only for itself but as a key to understanding global efforts for liberation.

This culminating performance walk was both ritual and revelation, a weaving of memory, resistance, and elemental force. At Sunday Market Square, Belle initiated the journey by sprinkling water on the earth, simulating the pouring of libation along the path, setting the stage for an offering. As attendees moved through the landscape, Belle guided them through layered histories using prose and art created with the architecture and at the wells.

“What freedom looks like — it’s wet,” Belle declared at the Fish Market Well, invoking resistance and the deep ties between water and liberation. The Water Gut, once a thriving free Black community, became a focal point of reflection — livelihoods erased to make way for public housing communities. Participants were challenged to observe the differences between an archival postcard of what was, the messages below the surface, and what could have been.