Uncomfortable Truths

Victoria & Albert Museum commemorates the abolition of Britain's slave trade in 1807 with talks, conferences, exhibitions, trails and projects on the shadows of slave trading.

Uncomfortable Truths at V&A

Curator Zoe Whitley doesn’t want us to automatically link slavery with a black subject.  Rather it should be looked upon as the Holocaust, that can’t be confined to history books.  Slavery is, like Holocaust, a human issue. 

New approach gives unexpected insights
The museum has taken a fresh approach to this kind of exhibition.  Instead of blacks being shipped away amidst chains, sickness and against their free will, modern artists – mostly black – have been invited to exhibit works on the theme giving surprising perspectives.   

The paintings of Zanzibar born artist Lubaina Himid show slaves with various professions like toy maker, ceramist, herbalist and painter.   German artist Christine Meisner contributes with a video about a Nigerian slave who returns home to Lagos after 30 years in Brazil.  He soon realizes that the people he left are gone physically (or emotionally) and that he has become more Brazilian than Nigerian.

Human story of survival
This contemporary approach to dealing with slavery has the advantage that we soon realize that slavery is not a monolithic subject that occurred in a certain time bracket of history.  Zoe Whitley describes the story of slavery as a human story of survival, a story about what man is capable of doing to man.