What did you gain from working with the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board?
I enjoyed working with the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board, which was an excellent introduction to daily culture and community in Hull. I gained good insight into the creative and collaborative energy connecting the University of Hull with local artists and creative leaders making contemporary art and socially engaged projects. It was particularly enjoyable working with the Black Heritage Hull Collective to deliver a workshop based on the exhibition.
Was working with an academic researcher a new experience for you?
Working with Dr Cassandra Gooptar was an invaluable experience, I was able to interpret and reimagine information from archives that I would have struggled to comprehend independently. I especially appreciated how by working with an academic researcher it was possible to connect information from multiple sources to develop fuller profiles for individuals listed in the research.
Connecting names with dates, locations and physical attributes enabled me to develop digital versions of the portraits to install on the Museums’ screens. Thanks to the research, these portraits could be annotated with as much information as available from a range of archival sources. This meant that while the portraits were largely improvised through imagination and process, they were developed from real data acquired through academic research.
This has helped me understand how difficult or traumatic subject matter can be transformed into educational art projects that can be interpreted by a broad range of audiences.
What aspects of the research did you feel inspired by when you produced your artworks as part of this commission?
I was predominately inspired by the notion that visual art could bring some level of visibility and memorialisation for names listed in records of enslavement such as the Sea island and Jamaica enslavement lists. These documents that describe humans as cargo are distressing in their nature, as they demonstrate how human lives can be reduced to cash value commodities. Also, upon visiting the Museum I encountered the Benin Plaque artwork split in half by bombardment damage from WW2. This inspired me to think about how art can be reparative, creating windows through time so that we can perhaps see our histories more clearly.
How do your artworks relate to the West African Adinkra symbols?
Homaging the philosophical significance of West African Adinkra symbols such as the Fafanto - a symbol evoking themes of tenderness, compassion and hope represented by the image of a butterfly - the artworks explore how multidisciplinary artforms including caligraphy, animation and portraiture might be deployed to engender new forms of memorialisation for underrepresented figures in colonial archives.