From an island so small you might have to squint to spy it on world maps, artist La Vaughn Belle is sharing not only the stories of her life, but the stories of the place she grew up — and the people who helped to form it. The House That Freedoms Built is an installation work which reminds us that, in her words, “history refuses to be buried.” And it will be on display at Rollins College for the rest of the year.
Belle’s artistic journey began as a child in the U.S. Virgin Islands, constantly drawing. After going to school for pre-med and eventually dropping out, Belle knew that her true path was art. She returned briefly before going to Cuba for more training. “Living in Cuba totally changed the way that I saw art. It expanded its view,” Belle tells Orlando Weekly. “I went there as a painter, primarily, and then came out being multimedia. I came out with this understanding that art could be anything.”
Belle’s artwork begins with the idea and is followed by the medium. Whether it’s a film project, sculpture, painting or performance, it all begins with a concept. Belle’s work is heavily inspired by the place she calls home, St. Croix. While St. Croix is the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, it’s stories often go untold.
“We are a small island that was cut up into over 150 plantations,” Belle explains. “That means that there is nowhere, not on the beach, not in the supermarket, not at the church, not in front of the Home Depot, where you do not see a remnant of the sugar plantation industry, of slavery. Plantations are a destination you go to. We live in them. We literally live in them.”
Belle found inspiration in the way the history of the island is built into its architecture, which is one of the inspirations behind her installation The House That Freedoms Built, on view outdoors at the Rollins College campus starting Friday.
After purchasing two 300-square-foot properties to become her studios, Belle found a deeper history during the renovations. “Learning about the history of the people who lived there before transformed the way I saw my buildings,” Belle says. “I had done a lot of the renovation work myself, and that relationship between narrative, the space, and labor, the care — that was really evident.”
Belle spoke with a historian and found out that the properties were first owned by Black women who had bought themselves out of slavery in the mid-1700s to 1800s, during the period of the Middle Passage.
“These women were free. There are many people who were enslaved their whole lives, but then we realized there are people who were enslaved for a short amount of time and found a way out of the system, which is quite remarkable,” Belle tells us. “Immediately, it made my house look different. I looked at it different. I immediately wanted to share the story because I thought it was inspiring. I was very inspired to share it; I felt like I needed to be a witness to it.”
“I thought a lot about these communities because … the neighborhood that my studios are in historically were what you called ‘free neighborhoods,’ meaning that they were people during slavery who were not enslaved, found some way to get freedom,” she adds. “They were highly controlled, and they were allowed to live in certain areas so that they could be watched because they were a threat to the society. These houses would have been their only free space.”
The three structures that make up the installation are each 9 feet tall, with intricate fretwork patterns carved into the roofs and walls. “ I was thinking a lot about an environment or people that were so under attack, that their home would have been a super-precious space,” Belle says. “It was really trying to create a preciousness that was protected; it was for the insiders. So people looking on the outside may not understand, like, ‘How do I get in?’ It’s not for you. You don’t. It’s more about, how do you construct it for yourself?”
Although the history behind the installation began hundreds of years ago, the themes of the work are still all too relevant today. “Although the project comes of a particular history, I think we can look at what’s happening today in terms of freedoms that we thought were stable that can shift, whether it be the right to our bodies or even our birthright citizenship,” Belle says. “There are all these freedoms that we think are stable, and they’re not stable. They’re negotiated. The project is about negotiated freedoms in that way and how domestic space is maybe a threshold for that personal versus civic.”
Belle’s intent for the installation — placed not within the Rollins Museum of Art but in the heart of the small Rollins campus — is for the work to find students (and the general public) where they are and inspire thought and introspection long after they leave the campus.
“That’s my hope, that people, the art meets them where they’re at, but then inspires them to go further,” Belle says. “That’s always my hope, that you find a point of entry that takes you a little further.”
“The House That Freedoms Built” Friday, July 24-Jan. 3, 2027; Rollins Museum of Art, 1000 Holt Ave., Winter Park; rollins.edu/rma; free.
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This article appears in July 22-28, 2026.