Trishaunna Henry is still in disbelief after being named winner of a J Wray & Nephew design competition for a monument which will pay homage to enslaved people who worked on the company’s Appleton Estate in Nassau Valley, St Elizabeth.

For her piece that was selected among 14 applications following the competition’s launch in June, Henry received $1 million and a scholarship valued at $450,000.

“It’s still a bit surreal to me. I’m trying to soak it in. At the event I was saying that this is a heavy burden to carry because I’m not just doing this for Trishaunna Henry, I’m doing this for my ancestors and I must capture some amount of emotion in this piece that tells the story even when I am not there,” she told the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday during the handover ceremony at National Gallery of Jamaica.

“I think I had a gut feeling that this was a good design and I’m not going to say I didn’t expect to win because when I do anything I expect to be on top. If I didn’t win it was something I would be proud of, especially since I don’t enter a lot of competitions,” said Henry, a resident of Rosewell, Clarendon.

Henry’s piece called ‘Less we forget’, which took a week to be completed, depicts the relationship between sugar cane and the socio-cultural and economical development of Jamaica.

“They basically asked for us to design a monument based on slavery and that was just about it and I did my research and I thought about the production of rum. Of course, sugar cane is a key ingredient and I thought about slavery and how our ancestors had to work the plantation…” she said.

“ I used that as a symbol in the piece along with the enslaved bodies which were trapped under the sugar cane. It showed the link between the sugar cane and slavery, she added.

She hopes people will get the strong message the monument will portray.

“A monument can start a conversation. It is important that we do not ignore the history of slavery and how these companies benefit today from that. Also I want visitors who would go to the space to be uplifted and as we enjoy freedom today to remember that it is coming from a long history of slavery and we should be mindful of that,” she said.

Meanwhile managing director at JWN Jean-Philippe Beyer said he was pleased with the outcome of the competition.

“I think it is a great time. We are very proud and very happy to have everybody be so passionate about the project,” he said.

Reparations advocate Barbara Blake Hannah said: “It was a joy to be part of the selection of this monument. The job is half finished. Now that we will have a monument to slaves we would like reparations for descendants, that would be good.”

Henry is expected to develop the monument from her design, which will showcase the names of the slaves who lived or worked on the Appleton plantation during its previous ownership by the then slave-owning Dickinson family.

The monument will also be incorporated in a tour at Joy Spence Appleton Estate Rum Experience (JSAERE) in St Elizabeth.

The construction of the monument is expected to cost approximately $5 million and its unveiling along with the launch of a book detailing the history of Appleton Estate, will take place in October during National Heritage Week

The second-place designer, Scheed Cole, received a cash grant of $200,000 and complimentary visit for four people to JSAERE.