“Whenever I travel, and I start to feel like a foreigner in a foreign land, I find the afro shop to go get a haircut,” says Curtis Santiago. Though the politics, protocols, and audio-visual environments can differ depending on the country he is in—reggae in one, kizomba in another—wherever he is, the Black barbershop provides him with a sense of home. When he was heading to Miami for the Fountainhead Residency for the month of October, Santiago felt some dread about sharing a space with two other artists. “I’m 45,” he says. “I can’t tell you the last time I lived with two people other than my partner or by myself.” But those reservations quickly fell away when Santiago met Gerald Lovell and Xavier Scott Marshall. “It was great to be in the house with two people who immediately became like brothers and homies,” he says.  

While in residence alongside the other artists, the Canadian-Trinidadian artist worked on his Infinity series, for the Artissima art fair in Turin, Italy. Started in 2008, the series consists of impossibly small dioramas set in antique and reclaimed jewelry boxes. Each diorama is different. Tableaus of Black figures may be laying in some grass, partying in a living room, or gabbing at the barbershop. One of the dioramas he was working on was a speculative piece. It’s the year 2035, and hundreds of tiny figures from Europe and North America are escaping by boat for South America and Africa, a reversal of the current migrant crisis. 

After pursuing a rap career with big ambitions, Santiago decided to switch to visual art full-time. The Infinity series has fulfilled some of the functions he desired from music: access to opportunities around the world, the chance to meet people from many different backgrounds. “For me, visual art is about creating something that provides wonder, or appeal, or escape. Not so much from the academic side—where it’s for those in the know, all theory theory theory,” he says. “It’s still a pop song in a way.”