a project that explores the constructed image of West Africa in the European imaginary during the late-Atlantic period (1600s-1910s)
staged at the Tina and Albert Small Center for Collaborative Design, New Orleans, LA, Oct. – Dec. 2019
exhibition supported by an Andy Warhol Foundation Platforms grant, administered by Antenna.works and Ashé Cultural Arts Center
found in rare book collections and historical image archives, a body of Western European images depicting West African architecture and landscape is assembled from small details and background images of maps, prints and photographs produced during imperial encounters
thinking about transformation of images across media: archival prints –> analog photography –> 35mm slides –> projected images
9 projectors cast these images onto sculptural fabric forms mounted on floor-to-ceiling frames, juxtaposing images of West African architecture to tell a story about the unreliability of the archive, tracing image relays through the history of the book and printmaking representing British, French, and Dutch encounters with West Africa.
iconographies of West Africa repeated, persisted or changed across imperial networks spanning Europe and West Africa
The fall 2019 presentation at the Small Center for Collaborative Design in New Orleans commemorated the 300th anniversary of the first arrival of enslaved Africans to New Orleans, Africans who departed from the West African port of Ouidah. the Small Center exhibition focused on three West African sites with historical ties to the U.S. Gulf Coast: the city-state of Ouidah, the Kingdom of Dahomey (both in present-day Benin), and the Kingdom of Benin (in present-day Nigeria).
street view