Lorna Goodison's poem Who was the Mother of Jamaican Art was inspired by an article by Tekla Mekfet’s article that spoke about enslaved women who made carvings of human figures representing the children they had sold away from them. Goodison believes unequivocally the first mother of Jamaican art was an enslaved African woman whose art was born out of unspeakable circumstances and whose work would have been unsigned.

While the poem speaks from the vantage point of the many gifted people that were lost to the world because of something as vile as the Atlantic slave trade, I expand this narrative to provide a form of commentary on the exploitation of modern visual artists holistically. A vantage point where the attainers of the art do not know the artist's names but possesses their work as merely an artifact of tourism. In the same breath of revealing the artist's struggle, I seek to give recognition and praise for the legacy the first mothers have left so new artists can thrive and amplify their voices.