Steve Mcqueen Caribs' Leap"/"Western Deep

Carib’s Leap / Western Deep (2002) is a key early work by Steve McQueen, comprising two conceptually linked film projects that address history, labor,

and the vulnerability of the human body. McQueen uses film not as narrative illustration but as a medium of physical and perceptual experience.

Carib’s Leap refers to a seventeenth-century event on Grenada in which members of the indigenous Carib population leapt from a cliff to escape colonial violence. Presented in two parts, the work translates this history into reduced, time-based images in which falling bodies and everyday scenes coexist as figures of memory and presence.

Western Deep, filmed in a South African gold mine, confronts viewers with conditions of extreme labor. Through darkness, sound, and confinement, the work produces an immersive experience that foregrounds endurance, risk, and control.