Nicola Muirhead

Spring 2026 Cycle – Photography
Bermuda  nicolamuirhead.com

Descendants of Summer “Descendants of Summer” is an ongoing documentary photography project rooted in my experience as a Bermudian artist seeking to understand how identity, memory and colonial legacy shape life on a 21-square-mile island. Bermuda is often reduced to a postcard image, yet beneath its surface lie stories carried in limestone, family lineages and landscapes marked by generations of survival and transformation. The project’s title references Bermuda’s early colonial name - the Summer Isles - invoking both the warmth of home and the shadows of empire. As the first British colony to implement slavery in 1616, Bermuda still bears the imprint of this history in its social fabric and the lived realities of descendants whose ancestors were forcibly displaced. My work aims to look beyond the clichés of paradise to reveal the deeper truths held in a place small enough for history to feel intimate, yet expansive enough to speak to the broader Atlantic world.

Through a series of portraits, landscapes, archival interventions and oral histories, I am building a visual narrative that collaborates with elders, historians and community organisations to reclaim and preserve stories often marginalised or softened in public memory - weaving together contemporary imagery with historical fragments, offering a reflective space to consider resilience, identity and the long reach of colonialism. “Descendants of Summer” is ultimately an act of care for the community that raised me - an effort to honour both the beauty and complexity of belonging to a place shaped by resistance as much as oppression, and to imagine pathways forward through remembrance and dialogue.

“My name is Ajala Omadele, but before Ajala Omadele, I was Coleman Burchell. The Burchell name comes into my family line through an act of violence. Peter Burchell came to Bermuda by shipwreck. He brought with him an enslaved woman of Pequot and Akan extraction, from Brazil. And as was the custom, Peter raped his chattel and produced the Burchell line." Ajala Nanang Omodele, writer, educator and memory keeper. 

"Our clamours dround in the windes, and the windes in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips but drowned in the outcries of the officers. A plague upon this howling; they are louder than the weather, or our office." William Strachey's first-hand account of the wreck of the Sea Venture, which crashed on Bermuda with the first British settlers in 1609, would be the inspiration for Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'. 

"And yet here, in the frigid basement of the Government Administration Building, the fallacy of my colonial conditioning is laid bare. The names of my kin are so beautifully written with perfect letters that loop and arch and stay within the confines of their assigned rows and columns. A ledger of people as property, as livestock, as currency." Liana Nanang Omodele, multidisciplinary storyteller. 

“My initial feeling was guilt and shame […] that someone in my family had done something so horrendous to another human being. But to be stuck in shame and to retreat into yourself is not productive." Mark Nash, descendant of Captain John Ingham, enslaver of Mary Prince, whose 1831 autobiography helped spark the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1834.

The Friendly Society, one of Bermuda’s earliest mutual aid organisations, served as a support network for newly emancipated communities. Among its most cherished heirlooms was Noah’s Ark, passed down through generations of lodge members and used in ceremonies and initiations. Signalling the biblical story of the great flood, it stood as a symbol of renewal and the promise of a new beginning in post-emancipation Bermuda. Guided by their motto, In Friendship, Love, and Truth, members committed themselves to uplifting and serving their community. 

Dr Michael Bradshaw is a historian and president of the Bermuda Friendly Societies Association. The Friendly Society, established in 1832, played a crucial role in helping formerly enslaved people create new lives for themselves after Emancipation in 1834. They were also the catalyst for uplifting and including other minority members on the island, such as Bermudians of Native American descent, women and fringe religious groups. The lodges became the schools, churches, and political hubs of the future Bermuda – connected to other Friendly Societies across the American Diaspora. 

A rare Black Barbie doll collected by Bermudian social activist Florenz Maxwell, who helped spearhead the end of segregation in Bermuda through the 1959 Theatre Boycott. She has spent a lifetime gathering Black dolls, reclaiming representation that was denied to her and her generation, affirming Black identity, beauty, and belonging. 

My father arrived in Bermuda at the age of 13 in the early 1960s. My grandfather, a British Army officer, was brought to the island to serve as the colonial headmaster of an infamous government run Junior Training School on Paget Island in Bermuda. There, so-called ‘troubled’ boys were sent for minor offences, facing a system that reflected the deep racial and colonial divisions of the time. 

Three crosses made from Bermuda cedar trees stand on the grounds of St. John's AME Church, overlooking Harrington Sound. Established in 1881, the church was the first African Methodist Episcopal church in Bermuda, founded four decades after the abolition of slavery. The Native cedar trees were lost during the 1950s scale-insect blight, introduced by U.S. military bases that covered large portions of the island during and after WWII. Their skeletal remains are a reminder of the fragility of the island's ecosystem and the impact of Imperialism and colonial power. 

“We knew that we were Native Americans, but it wasn't discussed in our family. Bermudians treated St. David’s Islanders cruelly because we were different [...] Many years later, we discovered that there was a Captain who had brought captured Pequots from North America to Bermuda in the 1700's. That's my lineage." Veronica Chameau, artist and member of the St. David's Islander and Native Community.

Artist Statement Biography

Meet the Artist

Nicola Muirhead

nicolamuirhead.com
@nmuirhead_photo