Joscelyn has been awarded a 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Project Grant that will
allow her to begin a major research-based project this summer at the invitation
of the Museum of London Docklands, UK. The MOL galleries are housed in the
original 1700s buildings at West India Docks and include the London, Sugar, and Slavery Gallery which traces the history of Britain's involvement in the slave trade and slavery in the Caribbean. Joscelyn will be focusing on the
complicated racial hierarchies created in Britain and its colonial societies on the other side of the Atlantic through sexual relationships formed between white men
(garrison officers, sailors, plantation overseers / owners) and enslaved black,
free coloured, and ‘poor white’ women. She aims to explore colonial lifestyles
(on plantations and in port cities) and to insert the stories of the women
implicated in these liaisons into the archives, thereby exposing the hidden web
of cross-race genealogical histories in order to reclaim visibility for these
women and to comment on contemporary society. The project will allow her to
extend her print-based practice to include moving / projected elements in order
to play on the topsy-turvy trails of deceit (concealed ancestries) as well as
popular (street / theatrical) culture of the period in relation to
‘performance‘ of identity and transgression of race / class / gender boundaries.
In June,
the first part of her research took her to Barbados, Antigua, and St. Kitts. In St. Kitts she is exploring slave history on Wingfield Estate, the oldest plantation on the island and also former home to Thomas Jefferson’s great-great grandfather.
Thank you
to Maurice Widowson (Romney Manor / Wingfield Esate) and Vicky O’Flaherty
(Chief Archivist) for their help with the first stage of this project.
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| Ruins of the sugar works at Wingfield Estate in St. Kitts where ongoing excavations continue to reveal new historical treasures |
