Broken Histories Are Never Permanent
History classes have been a struggle for me. Growing up, I was required to read textbooks dominated by a white narrative, and regurgitate “facts” that did not sit right in my mind. I recall how in fifth and eighth grades, whenever my teachers taught the class about African slave revolts, they focused on how many slave owners or white people died. This implied that I should feel bad for their deaths, disregarding why enslaved people were revolting in the first place–as if those who were revolting were the enemy. It was an untruthful lesson I struggled with for years.
These fragments of history are still sharp in my mind, leading me to seek out the lost pieces, and wonder how to put them back together.
La Vaughn Belle, an artist from the Virgin Islands and current fellow at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Center for Research for Women, knows how to put the pieces back together. Through visual art, she addresses histories fractured and forgotten by colonialism, and reconstructs the broken pieces into something whole.
One of her sculptures, “Trading Post,” features pieces of coral mined by enslaved Africans enclosed in a clear container. Belle’s intention in this piece is to recover and reconstruct coral fragments that had once been separated. The coral may be symbolic of the people who cut the pieces, and their fractured and discarded history. This act of reconstruction puts into focus a narrative that not only recognizes the enslaved Africans, but through the glass container, makes visible the complexity of reconstruction: the pieces do not fit perfectly. It is a chilling representation of the damage colonialism has caused.
These coral pieces are also featured in Belle’s sculpture, “I Am Queen Mary,” co-created with Jeannette Ehlers, an artist based in Denmark, memorializing Mary Thomas, a laborer on a sugar cane plantation in St. Croix who led the “Fireburn” labor revolt. 30 years after the abolition of slavery in the former Danish colony, Mary Thomas, along with three other female laborers, Agnes Elizabeth Salomon, Matilde McBean, and Susanna Abrahamsson, rebelled against cruel and abusive working conditions, and the system of servitude that characterized plantation labor. In Belle and Ehler’s statue, Queen Mary sits on top of the coral pieces, in a chair holding a cane bill and a torch, a posture inspired by the iconic image of Huey P. Newton holding a rifle and a spear.
What strikes me about “I Am Queen Mary” are the pieces of history–the coral, the image of Mary Thomas, and the representation of Huey P. Newton–that are assembled to form a new narrative, one that resists ideas centric to whiteness and colonialism, and tells the story from the marginalized perspective. Even the title, “I Am Queen Mary”, changes the narrative, reappropriating the colonially charged term “Queen.” This was not a posthumous title created by the artists, but, according to Belle, “the title she was bestowed by the people for her leadership.”
Through her works of art, Belle reconstructs pieces of history broken by European supremacy. Her work fiercely resists historical narratives controlled and dominated by whiteness, and aids to heal the wounds opened by these very narratives. For me, Belle’s art helps me locate these lost pieces of history, allowing me to gradually learn what it means and feels like to put these fragments back together.
Learn More
Learn more about Belle at Barnard College on Wednesday, October 2, at 6:30 p.m. for What We Mean When We Say Free Them All: Lessons from the Social Justice Institute, a conversation with fellow BCRW Social Justice Institute Residents Mariame Kaba and CeCe McDonald, with Senior Activist Fellow Emerita Katherine Acey moderating. This event is free and open to all. For more information, visit the event page.
Supplemental Reading
The History Behind “I Am Queen Mary” and The Four Women Behind the “Fireburn” Revolt
A Conversation With La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers: “I Am Queen Mary”
“Trading Post” and “I Am Queen Mary” http://www.tb-credit.ru/contact.html http://www.tb-credit.ru/zaim.html