Table Of ContentVisualising Slavery
LiverpooL StudieS in internationaL SLavery, 9
Visualising Slavery
Art Across the African Diaspora
Edited by
Celeste-Marie Bernier and Hannah Durkin
visualising Slavery
Liverpool university press
First published 2016 by
Liverpool university press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
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Copyright © 2016 Liverpool university press
The right of Celeste-Marie Bernier and Hannah durkin to be identified as
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Copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
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In Memory of Donald Rodney (1961–98)
Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xv
introduction: ‘inside the invisible’: african diasporic artists
visualise transatlantic Slavery
Celeste-Marie Bernier and Hannah Durkin 1
Part I Slavery and Memory in Contemporary African Diasporic Art
Chapter 1: Lost and Found at the Swap Meet: Betye Saar and the
everyday object
Lubaina Himid 17
Chapter 2: Preserves
Debra Priestly 29
Chapter 3: What Goes without Saying
Hank Willis Thomas 34
Chapter 4: Spectres in the postcolonies: reimagining violence and
resistance
Roshini Kempadoo 48
Chapter 5: Strategic remembering and tactical Forgetfulness in
depicting the plantation: a personal account
Keith Piper 62
Part II Historical Iconography and Visualising Transatlantic Slavery
Chapter 6: The Chattel record: visualising the archive in diasporan
art
Fionnghuala Sweeney 81
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Visualising Slavery
Chapter 7: Henry Box Brown, african atlantic artists and radical
interventions
Alan Rice 104
Chapter 8: uncle tom and the problem of ‘Soft’ resistance to
Slavery
David Bindman 119
Chapter 9: The after-image: Frederick douglass in visual Culture
Zoe Trodd 129
Part III African Diasporic Monuments and Memorialisation
Chapter 10: Siting the Circum-atlantic: nelson in a Bottle in
trafalgar Square
Geoff Quilley 155
Chapter 11: art and Caribbean Slavery: Modern visions of the 1763
Guyana rebellion
Leon Wainwright 168
Chapter 12: ‘The Greatest negro Monuments on earth’: richmond
Barthé’s Memorials to toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques
dessalines
Hannah Durkin 184
Part IV Contemporary Legacies in African Diasporic Art
Chapter 13: We Might not Be Surprised: visualising Slavery and the
Slave Ship in the Works of Charles Campbell and Mary evans
Eddie Chambers 203
Chapter 14: ‘X is for X ray, X Slave, X Colony’: a ‘Lexicon of
Liberation’ versus ‘My Slave History’ in the paintings, instal-
lations and Sketchbooks of donald rodney
Celeste-Marie Bernier 218
Chapter 15: reconfiguring african trade Beads: The Most Beautiful,
Bountiful and Marginalised Sculptural Legacy to Have Survived
the Middle passage
Marcus Wood 248
afterword: against the Grain: Contingency and Found objects
Nathan Grant 274
Notes on Contributors 280
Index 285
• viii •
List of Illustrations
List of illustrations
Black-and-White Illustrations
Figure 1: roshini Kempadoo, still image from Amendments: Becoming
Venezuela (2007) 51
Figure 2: roshini Kempadoo, still image from Ghosting: Aunt Ruth
Calls to Mind All That Happened (2004) 54
Figure 3: roshini Kempadoo, still image from Amendments: Tragarete
Road, Port-of-Spain (2007) 56
Figure 4: roshini Kempadoo, Virtual Exiles: Frontlines/Backyards (1)
(2000), digital photograph 59
Figure 5: roshini Kempadoo, Virtual Exiles: Frontlines/Backyards (3)
(2000), digital photograph 61
Figure 6: Keith piper, The Seven Rages of Man: Panel 2 (1984), mixed
media 67
Figure 7: Keith piper, Go West Young Man: Panel 6 (1987), photograph
and handwritten and printed text 73
Figure 8: Keith piper, Lost Vitrines (2007), installation 75
Figure 9: Keith piper, Running Away from Lost Vitrines (2007),
installation 77
Figure 10: eldzier Cortor, Southern Gate (1942–43), oil on canvas
© Smithsonian institute of american art 91
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Visualising Slavery
Figure 11: William Blake (after J. G. Stedman), Flagellation of a
Female Samboe Slave (c.1791), engraving 95
Figure 12: Henry Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box
Brown, Written by Himself (1st english ed.) (Manchester: Lee and
Glynn, 1851), screenshot 107
Figure 13: Simeon Barclay presents his reconstruction of Henry Box
Brown’s 1851 visit to Leeds (october 2009). photographs by
permission of Simeon Barclay 117
Figure 14: John anster Fitzgerald, Uncle Tom ‘Is God Here?’ (1853),
engraving, British Museum 121
Figure 15: eleanor vere Boyle, Nina Reading to Children and Tiff
(n.d.), lithograph, private collection 124
Figure 16: Lunar new year, I am / yo soy (2013), rochester mural.
Courtesy Lny, CC By-nC-Sa 148
Figure 17: Leroy Foster, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1972),
detroit mural 152
Figure 18: yinka Shonibare, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2010), mixed
media, royal Museums Greenwich 164
Figure 19: yinka Shonibare, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2010), mixed
media, royal Museums Greenwich: showing its placement
outside the Sammy ofer Wing of the national Maritime Museum 165
Figure 20: aubrey Williams, Revolt (1960), oil on canvas,
134 × 165cm, © estate of aubrey Williams. all rights reserved,
daCS 2014 169
Figure 21: philip Moore, 1763 Monument (‘the Cuffy monument’)
(1976), Square of the revolution, Georgetown, Guyana.
photographs by Jynell osborne 170
Figure 22: richmond Barthé’s toussaint Louverture monument
(1952) surrounded by earthquake shelters (2012). Bronze, over life
size. national palace, port-au-prince, Haiti. photograph by Kate
Hodgson 185
Figure 23: Charles Campbell, Transformation Set (2004), oil on
canvas, 18 × 54in 207
• x •
