Out of Many – A Caribbean Themed Art Exhibit
Galleries @ WORK_SPACE
Manchester
July 3, 2025
Art cannot be separated from the political and social climate it exists in. So I want to use the occasion of my visit to Work_Space in Manchester to view the work of immigrant artists and their descendants to talk about what it is that we are facing right now.
Out of Many is described as “[honoring] the beauty, spirit, and cultural richness of Caribbean people through works in various mediums including fine art, sculpture, clothing, music, and more.”
The exhibit unabashedly celebrates immigrants. Millions of people from the Caribbean have come to the United States, and our region in particular, to make a new life for themselves. They’ve brought with them art of every form, from the visual splendor on display in Manchester to delicious foods, musical rhythms you feel deep in your soul, thought-provoking literature and customs and traditions that have become so ingrained in our experience that we mistakenly think of them as American in origin.
These people are under direct attack by President Trump and his administration. Haitian, Jamaican and other Caribbean people have been seized, detained and deported just as Hispanic, Muslim and other people have been. We got a taste of this injustice in the first Trump administration. Now, fueled by electoral success and a supplicant Congress, the targeting of immigrants has been kicked into overdrive.
You may have heard of the poem “First They Came” by Pastor Martin Niemöller in post-World War II Germany. It’s not very long, and worth printing in its entirety:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
What you may not have heard is that Niemöller was an anti-Semitic supporter of the Nazi regime, until they came for him. He spent most of the war in the infamous Nazi concentration camps for speaking out against Nazi control of the Christian church. This poem came out of the remorse he felt for his actions. He called on Germans of all walks of life to accept their complicity in the crimes of the Nazis.
There are unspeakably cruel and inhumane acts being carried out right now against immigrants. Children snatched from schools. Mothers arrested in front of their children. Innocent men sent to prisons in other countries. All of these acts are being committed in our name, to “Make America Great Again,” a course of action that our president told us he was going to pursue, and then a majority of Americans voted for.
The art shown in this article is not supposed to make an argument for the exceptional, the talented or the bold. This art is a display of humanity. A human being is responsible for each piece here. It shares a human experience. These human beings are at risk due to an openly racist, xenophobic political apparatus that has replaced the words “concentration camp” with “detention center.” Every single American is complicit and guilty for these crimes, because we continue to allow them to occur. There are more than 300 million people in the United States — more than enough to stand up to even the power of the government. Yet we don’t.
Besides, why should we care anyway? If you’re not an undocumented immigrant, what is there to worry about? Except that the president has already floated, multiple times, the idea of deporting American citizens. Except that the Supreme Court still can’t seem to decide if birthright citizenship should remain the law of the land. Except that a new federal budget just passed that makes ICE the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
If we can’t see the humanity in our immigrant neighbors and friends, the humanity that produces such beautiful art, that cares for our loved ones, that prepares our food, that teaches our children, that confronts us every single time we look at another person who wasn’t born here, then at least see what Pastor Niemöller couldn’t see until he was locked in a concentration camp. The violence of a state that has decided its own people are the enemy is coming for all of us.
