Graced by a natural deep harbor, Curaçao became one of the largest Slave Depots during the Dutch rule (1673 onwards).
Ships stopped in Curaçao en route to the Americas. From here, the enslaved Africans were shipped off to the rest of the Americas.
Situated on a hill overlooking the sea, the building in which Quarantine takes place originally housed (or quarantined) enslaved Africans who survived the trip from Africa but were too sick to continue on to other places. After their recovery, most traveled on to their final destination on one of the other islands—or to any part of the rest of the Americas. There are plans to turn the Quarantine Building into a luxury hotel.
“My heritage informs both my artistic expressions and my worldview. And if I identify myself as Caribbean/Antillean, my world is a reflection of the complexity that comes from being a member of a crossroads culture, and the multi-cultural baggage that it entails. I strive to tell a story, without the urge to explain the plot or for the audience to 'get it.' I cherish the questions and the unexpected. I aim to give voice to an intense desire to create something new out of what is already perceived to be fact. I don't try to recreate, but rather to 'blend all the ingredients' or influences, and make something new, something 'Creole' in its truest sense. This is where my work is most typically Caribbean. As a member of a 'crossroads' culture, I am constantly negotiating the links between tradition and modernity, realism and the supernatural, colonial and post-colonial.” (Christa 2002, 302)