To Heal a Butterfly: the researcher and the artist reflect

Dr Cassandra Gooptar, Wilberforce Institute researcher and artist Deanio X share their experiences of working on and their insights into the ‘To Heal a Butterfly’ exhibition.

Dr Cassandra Gooptar is the Primary Investigator on the Guardian Legacies of Enslavement Project which is focused on investigating the Guardian newspaper’s links to transatlantic slavery.

Leading artist Deanio X was commissioned by Hull Museums and the University of Hull to produce a series of thought-provoking artworks for temporary display at Wilberforce House Museum. His project To Heal A Butterfly creates a visual response to the Wilberforce Institute’s research and Guardian’s Legacies of Enslavement project.

Responding to this research, Deanio X produced:

“a series of artworks that seek to highlight an area of research in Britain’s imperial past through a combination of improvisational portraiture, digital animation and sculptural installation. The artworks have been created as a visual response to the Wilberforce Institute's research on the 'Sea Islands & Jamaica' enslavement records”. Deanio X

The exhibition, developed with Hull Museums with support from the award-winning Wilberforce House Advisory Group is on display at the Wilberforce House Museum until April 2025.

The researcher

What is the objective of the research side of the Guardian Legacies of Enslavement Project?

At the core of the research is investigating The Guardian’s links with enslavement, placing the perspectives of the enslaved people at the forefront, engagement and repair-building with descendant communities in Manchester, Jamaica, Sea Islands and Brazil. The research, both past and ongoing, helps to inform the direction and engagement with descendant communities in the regions of relevance mentioned above.

The research is ongoing, what are the major findings so far?

The research on the Guardian Legacies of Enslavement began in 2020 with an investigation into the paper’s links with historical slavery. Since then, findings revealed that the newspaper had links with enslavement in three regions: the Sea Islands, Brazil and Jamaica. The research acted as the grounding for an apology from The Guardian acknowledging its links with slavery, the award winning Cotton Capital series which sought to provide an editorial response to the academic findings and a £10 million, 10 year restorative justice project focused on engagement and repair building with descendant communities in Manchester (where The Guardian was founded and where its Founder operated as a cotton merchant), Brazil, Jamaica and the Sea Islands.

The research and reports on the Guardian Legacies of Enslavement project have been published and are fully accessible online. To summarise, my research has found that the founder of the Manchester Guardian, John Edward Taylor, had links with slavery through his cotton merchant business. There were eleven men who helped to fund The Guardian in 1821, they along with the founder of the newspaper were part of our investigation. Nine of the eleven founders had links with enslavement with one, Sir George Philips, being an enslaver in Jamaica. 

What have you found interesting about the process of working with an artist?

Ensuring that the lives, stories and perspectives of the enslaved people are at the forefront, is a core tenet of my research on the Guardian Legacies of Enslavement project. The third report on the Guardian project entitled, Sea Islands & Jamaica: Tracing the Enslaved People, focused entirely on highlighting the names of the enslaved people linked to the paper and the lives of the enslaved people off whose backs wealth was accumulated by the founders. This report and its findings formed the academic basis for Deanio X’s exhibition.

The enslaved people who comprise the thought-provoking exhibition are based on some of the names I uncovered in my investigation of The Guardian’s links with Success plantation in Hanover, Jamaica. The research sought to uncover who were the enslaved people forced to toil in Jamaica and the Sea Islands in the name of profits and cotton and highlight the resistance and agency of the enslaved people. My ongoing research on the project seeks to take this work further and uncover family trees, oral histories and any information that can shed light on the lives of the enslaved people.

I was able to share my findings with Deanio X, including some updated findings on the Guardian project. 

How do you think the artworks relate to your research?

Having a powerful artistic representation alongside the names of the enslaved people uncovered in the Guardian research and who were involved in the Christmas Uprising 1831-2, the largest uprising of enslaved people in the former British Caribbean, helps to not only highlight the resistance of the enslaved people but also helps to reclaim a past which has traditionally not been at the forefront of Britain’s narrative of its legacies of enslavement.

Engagement with descendant communities, the heritage sector and artists are in my opinion, an essential part of making academic research accessible to various audiences, especially students. In the Caribbean and across the UK there has increasingly been work confronting legacies of enslavement and colonialism within the academic, archival, heritage and artistic sectors. Further collaboration and synergising of efforts in these sectors can assist in ensuring valuable work in this field is transferable and accessible to wider audiences.

This is why Deanio X’s work important and impactful. It allows for a visual representation of the enslaved people whose histories and names have been lost and facilitates knowledge exchange and awareness of this obscured history with mainstream audiences. It also connects with audiences and can have an emotional impact, allowing persons to gain a better understanding of these complex stories and trauma at a glance.

The Artist

Why did this artist commission interest you?

In my recent practice I have been exploring underrepresented histories pertaining to the African diaspora during the British colonial era. This commission stood out to me as an opportunity to respond to research on emancipation that revealed how individuals frequently agitated for freedom and resisted enslavement during the triangular trade.

I was interested therefore in devising an art project that could attribute a sense of monumentality to these near-anonymous people who catalysed the abolitionist movement but have been funneled into the small print of Atlantic history. Having this artwork in place at the Wilberforce House Museum felt like contributing to a sense of balance in Britain's memory of itself. 

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.

What major challenges and opportunities did you experience when developing this artwork?

The work is always challenging, especially when dealing with subjects that can elicit conflicting emotions but overall the opportunity to work in a multidisciplinary approach that included portraiture, sculpture, digital animation. Overall, I feel the commission was a major opportunity to collaborate on a project that hopefully encourages people to think about how we can mend legacies of social division emanating from the past. It was also a significant personal milestone to bring a sculptural project to life with the help of London-based sculptor Marcus Cornish.

Could you tell us about any follow up work from this exhibition?

Following To Heal A Butterfly I've continued research into the geographies bordering the Atlantic Ocean, creating a new body of work reflecting the transmission of cultures, mythologies and histories that inform our experiences in the present day. I currently have an exhibition open at Palo Gallery New York until 31st December. The exhibition called Atlantic Aurora is a meditation on the myriad cultures that inform human experiences. Through mixed media, the exhibition meditates on the geographic and human legacies of cultural transmission via the Atlantic ocean.

To read more on the findings and response from The Guardian check out the Cotton Capital series or listen to the Cotton Capital podcast.