EMPIRE LINES

Rijksmuseum curator Valika Smeulders polishes and personalises our understanding of the Dutch Golden Age, from their joint exhibition with the UN, Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery.

When Slavery opened at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2021, it was one of the first exhibitions of its kind. Spanning 250 years from the 17th to the 19th century, it told Dutch colonial history as a common, national history, centred on lived experience. Its ten stories travel from Brazil, Suriname, and the Caribbean, to South Africa, Asia, and the Netherlands, featuring those who were enslaved, those who profited from slavery, and those who resisted the plantation system. These personal stories connect us as individuals across space and time, asking difficult questions. Were European abolitionists so important in ending the transatlantic slave trade? And what does it mean to be a descendant of plantation owners today?

As an adapted version of the exhibition opens at the United Nations in New York, curator Valika Smeulders explores how material and immaterial cultures together reveal ‘what you don’t see’ in museums, why museums must collaborate, how temporary exhibitions can change permanent collections, and the power of personal storytelling in spaces of contemporary political power.

Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery runs at the United Nations Headquarters Visitors’ Lobby in New York until 30 March, then across UN offices throughout 2023.  You can also access the entire exhibition online. 

WITH: Dr. Valika Smeulders, one of the four curators of Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery, in Amsterdam (2021) and in New York (2023). She is the head of the Department of History at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

IMAGE: Richard Koek.

SOUNDS: Rijksmuseum.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Japan House London curator Hashimoto Mari and translator Eyre Kurasawa unravel kumihimo, the ancient craft of Japanese silk braiding, and how its contemporary reconstructions connect Edo-era samurai armour with French military fashions from the 19th century.

Literally translated as ‘joining threads together’, kumihimo is the intricate Japanese practice of cord braiding. Its strong and flexible ‘structure’ has lent its use to everything from samurai sword scabbards and handles, tying high-fashion kimono and haori following the restoration of the Emperor Meiji in 1868, to origami, solar panels, and aerospace engineering today.

Japan House London’s new exhibition highlights the work of DOMYO, a Tokyo-based workshop established in 1652 which still practices and researches this traditional craft, with the Shōsōin (Imperial) Repository in Nara. Curator Hashimoto Mari unravels the simultaneous evolution of braiding in China, Asia, and South America, its surprising overlaps with Western textile designs like tartan, and how contemporary modeller Hasegawa Akira reconstructs Napoleonic army jackets, replacing ‘Russian braids’ with kumihimo to hint at the common threads between Japanese and European military histories.

KUMIHIMO: Japanese Silk Braiding by DOMYO runs at Japan House London until 11 June 2023.

For more, read my review of KUMIHIMO in gowithYamo: https://www.gowithyamo.com/blog/visit-japan-for-free-from-london

WITH: Hashimoto Mari, curator of KUMIHIMO: Japanese Silk Braiding by DOMYO. She is the vice-chairperson of EISEI BUNKO, and a writer and editor who specialises in the Japanese arts. Eyre Kurasawa is an interpreter, writer, and researcher in Japanese and English.

ART: ‘French Army Tunic, Hasegawa Akira (2021)’.

SOUNDS: DOMYO.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Curator Barnaby Wright transports us from the Courtauld Gallery in London, to the Caribbean island of Trinidad, as seen - and heard - by Peter Doig, one of Europe’s most highly valued contemporary painters.

Peter Doig’s vast figurative paintings pay homage to the many places where he has lived and practiced - though never really called home. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, his career has been characterised by constant travel and movement, and his status as Europe’s most expensive living artist. But his landscapes are layered in with multiple, and more popular, inspirations - like found photographs, films, and above all, music - settings which move between figuration and abstraction, actuality and the imagination.

Trinidad is perhaps the unlikely focus of the Courtauld Gallery’s new exhibition, which shows works painted since Doig’s recent return to London from the Caribbean, where he has lived since 2002. Mainstream art markets often prize Doig’s isolated Canadian mountain scenes, influenced by the likes of Edvard Munch, but here we see the artist as an active participant in Port of Spain’s local community, practicing with the BBC’s Boscoe Holder, poet Derek Walcott, and prisoners on the island of Carrera. Curator Dr. Barnaby Wright delves into Doig’s loving depictions of the Mighty Shadow, a titan of Trinidadian calypso and soca, why Carnival keeps him working all night, and how the self-portrayed ‘outsider’ both draws from - and challenges - exotifying gazes on non-European subjects from post-Impressionists like Paul Gauguin.

Peter Doig runs at the Courtauld Gallery in London until 29 May 2023.

WITH: Dr. Barnaby Wright, curator of Peter Doig. He is the Deputy Head of the Courtauld Gallery and Daniel Katz Curator of 20th Century Art.

ART: ‘Painting on an Island (Carrera), Peter Doig (2019)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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We're back offline, and inside Banned., a new exhibition blending archive and present-day photography at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Curator Sabina Desir joins Anita, Mark, and Julie - three children of Black and Indigenous American airmen stationed at RAF Manston in the 1950s - to imprint their portraits of racial identity and ambiguity in Britain.

Between 1951 and 1958, 2500 US Air Force servicemen and women were stationed at RAF Manston, near Margate. 200 were African American, and others were from non-white Indigenous and ethnic groups. After finding a 1957 newspaper article in the East Kent Times which downplayed the level of segregation imposed on British soil - and the furious responses this triggered from residents at the time - curator Sabina Desir began to reach out to those in the community today. Anita, Mark, and Julie, portrayed on the walls by local artist Richard Birch, share their lived experiences of tracing their ancestry - some, all the way back to Cherokee chiefs. Plus, Sabina exposes the different perceptions of the post-war Windrush generation, new connections in Charlie Evaristo-Boyce's pop art series, and the power of representing these people in the same place where they were banned.

Banned. runs at the Turner Contemporary in Margate until 8 May 2023.

WITH: Sabina Desir, curator of Banned. She is the Artistic Director and Creative Producer of the Ramsgate-based Freedom Road Project. Anita Stokes, Mark Mahan, and Julie Wing are all children of Manston US Air Force Servicemen, working with the Banned. project.

ART: Children of the Manston US Air Force Servicemen Print Series, Richard Birch (2023)

IMAGE: 'Anita Stokes, Mark Mahan, and Julie Wing, in front of their portraits in Children of the Manston US Air Force Servicemen Print Series, Richard Birch (2023)'.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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EMPIRE LINES uncovers the unexpected, often two-way, flows of empires through art.

Now, EMPIRE LINES is moving offline for good - with even more exclusive interviews recorded on location with the world's leading curators, historians, and artists, bringing museums and exhibitions to meet you.

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MUSIC: Combinación // The Dubbstyle

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic

Dr. Sarah Longair unseats European powers' efforts to control the East African coast, through a Kiti Cha Enzi, or Swahili Chair of Power, produced in the 19th century.

Intricately decorated with an ivory inlay, a large, wooden throne sits proudly - not in its place of production of Witu, Kenya, but the stores of the British Museum. Kiti cha enzi, or seats of power, were used as thrones by Swahili rulers from the 18th century. Their distinctive form incorporates myriad cultural influences, highlighting the vibrant pre-colonial trading history of the Swahili community, while their symbolic use speaks to shifting patterns of power on the African coast. Produced as Germany and Britain competed for colonial control on the East African coast, this chair is a material symbol of how a small Swahili community resisted European expansion. Its seizure from the Swahili Sultan Fumo Bakari, and subsequent relocation by Admiral Fremantle to the National Maritime Museum, and later British Museum, speaks to our current interests in the colonial origins of museum objects. But it also reveals the complex rivalries between Western imperial pofwers, and how East African leaders exercised their own agency by playing them against each other.

PRESENTER: Dr. Sarah Longair, Senior Lecturer in the History of Empire at the University of Lincoln.

ART: Kiti Cha Enzi (Swahili Chair of Power), East Africa (19th Century).

IMAGE: 'Sketch of Kiti Cha Enzi of the Sultan of Witu, British Museum Af1992,05.1. Drawing: S Longair'.

SOUNDS: Radi Cultural Group.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Dr. Chris Spring tears up stereotypes of African textiles, through Araminta de Clermont's 2010 photograph, Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx.

Three young men wait at a bus stop near Cape Town in South Africa, clad in blankets of brilliant blue and rose red. Historically, these 'African' woven textiles were originally manufactured by Europeans during the colonial period. Dutch imperial traders, who first entered the Indian Ocean trade in the mid-seventeenth century, only added to the existing vigorous trade in textiles which had been carried out by Indian, Arab, and Chinese traders for many centuries before the arrival of Europeans. From indigo resist-dyed blauwdruk, to Swahili kanga, and South African shweshwe, these ‘authentic’ products are truly the hybrid product of places and peoples working across and within empires - from factories in Manchester, to migrant merchants from Kutch, and businesses within the Japanese Empire.

This confident photograph speaks to how patterns and designs had always been dictated by African taste, aesthetics, and patronage, and utilised by women to communicate across gendered and religious social boundaries. Now representative of diverse African identities and indigeneity, these fabrics unsettle ideas of what an 'African' textile should look like, revealing innovation and modernity - all the way to the Marvel film, Black Panther.

PRESENTER: Dr. Chris Spring, artist, writer and former curator in the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum  He was the curator of Social Fabric: African Textiles Today, at the British Museum and William Morris Gallery.

ART: Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx, Araminta de Clermont (2010).

IMAGE: 'Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx'.

SOUNDS: Chad Crouch.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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We're back offline, and in the artist's bedroom at Van Gogh House in London, as Vaishnavi Mohan pins down Harold Offeh's sound installation, We Came Here, an imagined conversation on migration between Vincent Van Gogh and the Jamaican-born, Brixton-based community leader, Olive Morris.

In 1873, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh arrived in Stockwell in South London. Almost a century later, Olive Morris, a Jamaican-born community leader, was actively campaigning for feminist, Black, and squatters' rights in nearby Brixton. Researching the lives of these two 20 year olds, Harold Offeh, Van Gogh House's then artist-in-residence, became intrigued by the idea of the artist as a ‘migrant’ in London. His sound installation, We Came Here, is an cross-generational conversation between artist and activist, exploring their shared and common experiences of London, housing rights and social justice, and the development of their individual sociopolitical awarenesses. Community Engagement Guide Vaishnavi Mohan shares narratives of young migrants arriving in London today, delving into questions of access and decolonisation of the museum space.

We Came Here runs at Van Gogh House London until 18 December 2022.

PRESENTER: Vaishnavi Mohan, Community Engagement Guide at Van Gogh House, and science communicator.

ART: We Came Here, Harold Offeh, with voice actors Abel Enkelaar and Nkara Stephenson (2022).

IMAGE: 'Van Gogh's Bedroom.'

SOUNDS: Extract from We Came Here, Harold Offeh.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Deborah Lee-Talbot exposes the political agency of Indigenous women in British New Guinea, through a photograph of the Papuan Geua, taken in the 1880s.

In her European 'Mother Hubbard' dress, and necklace made of local shells, Geua's status as a powerful, 'Big Woman' of Papua New Guinea is without question. A politically motivated Indigenous intermediary, she collaborated with the British missionaries and explorers that visited Port Moresby during the late nineteenth century, when the island was known as British New Guinea in the British Empire. Geua' prominence is evidenced by her repeated presence throughout the London Missionary Society's (LMS) archives, photographed by the likes of George Lawes. Her images serve in part as mission propaganda for European audiences, revealing what it was like for religious missionaries in the tropical Pacific region. Yet rereading Geua’s photograph from her perspective challenges the idea of Papuans' evolution as Christians, exposing Geua’s own agency as an Indigenous woman, and her critical role in bridging two distinctive cultures - as well as the unique role colonial photographs play today.

PRESENTER: Deborah Lee-Talbot, doctoral candidate in Australian-Pacific and archival history at Deakin University, Australia.

ART: Indigenous Intermediary Geua in ‘Photographs Mainly of Port Moresby’, George Lawes, (1880s).

IMAGE: 'Geua'.

SOUNDS: Blue Dot Sessions.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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Dr. Helen Paul bursts the South Sea Bubble, tracing the triangular trade of slavery between London and Britain's colonies in South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, via John Cleveley's 18th century painting, The Luxborough Galley on Fire.

Sailing into the dark green waters of the mid-Atlantic Ocean, the Luxborough Galley is in imperilled. Consumed by flames, with no land in sight, its white passengers frantically firefight - to no avail. Commissioned by one of the ship's few survivors for display in Greenwich, John Cleveley's six oil paintings recast the story as one of British heroism - erasing the history of the South Sea Company's colonial profiteering, catastrophic South Sea Bubble of 1720, and scapegoating its enslaved Black passengers for carelessly causing the blaze. Still housed in the National Maritime Museum, on the southern bank of the River Thames, John Cleveley’s rendering exposes London's vast investment into the international slave trade, linking British colonies across the world. By focussing on cannibalism, it unintentionally commemorates the inhumanity, lack of civislisation, and crimes against humanity committed by its white colonial benefactors.

PRESENTER: Dr Helen Paul, lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton, and Honorary Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction at UCL.

ART: The Luxborough Galley on Fire, 25 June 1727, John Cleveley the Elder (c. 18th Century).

IMAGE: 'The 'Luxborough Galley' on fire, 25 June 1727'.

SOUNDS: One Man Book.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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