While Hudson Valley today is predominantly seen as an idyllic tourist destination, notions of pleasantness and leisure are never neutral. Modern-day tourism and totalizing narratives of agricultural slavery mask the dynamic livelihoods hidden in historic Guineatown. Over the course of fifty years (from 1790 to 1840) and two generations, the New Guinea Settlement was home to over 150 residents. Yet of this quantity, only a handful of residents’ names are known today. Following this, the project imposes a plane of wheat, both a bucolic symbol and a common product of slavery in Hudson Valley, on the landscape of New Guinea a free black settlement. This overbearing plane is perforated revealing glimpses of the stories and the more organic organization below.
