 Good afternoon everyone, and thank you so much Dr. Cole for that very warm and heartfelt introduction It's my pleasure to begin this afternoon by Sharing with you some of my own photographs, but I'll also be showing work by other artists And I wanted to kind of shift the conversation Just a little bit or maybe a lot We've been talking about searching for our roots and how we go about searching for our roots Especially in the 21st century when we have at our hands some of the amazing research some of the amazing scientific work That we've we've heard today from our specialists but I think in addition to DNA testing and also in addition to Looking at how science has been able to help us search for and sometimes find our roots Many diasporic Africans have traditionally chosen to search for their roots by engaging in heritage tourism and I've done for about the past 15 years a number of different studies on African diasporic heritage tourism particularly to Ghana and I think often and I'm showing you here in the first slide an image from the distance of Elmina Castle a castle fort fortified complex that was built by the Portuguese in 1482 on the coast of Ghana and This slide here is of Fort Good Hope and as many of you may or may not know But the coast of Ghana is lined with forts and castles built by the European traders with assistance from Local Africans in the 1400s 1500 1600 1700s and so on and these forts are places that have Symbolic and historic meaning for many of us and so in searching for our roots Often diasporic Africans have sought to actually go to some of these sites To look at in these sites to search in records in places like Ghana for example or even Senegal For their roots, but they're often looking in these actual physical Places that we see and one of the things it's important to consider and as we look at the photographs realize that Life goes on that these forts and so-called castles are not just places that relate Only to the history of the slave trade, but in fact there are people living Fishing working there are actually many people who are artists on the coast Who are very much attuned to this tourist trade and attuned to making works that are available for sale that help to Feed into these narratives of how we construct our past if we for the four on the one hand don't have the The benefit of DNA research or even if we do have the benefit of DNA research We're trying to affirm that research or perhaps search for a different finding and in the image that I'm showing you here We have a young man who is an artist He lives in Elmina and he's done a series of works where he's painted the exterior of Elmina castle It's a pretty familiar exterior and in the series here He has two different versions that he has for sale This one is called the revenge of the blacks where he has a Group of African men who were taken as a coffill Trying to be taken by Europeans as a coffill into this this fortified castle Elmina here But instead they are able to escape and defend themselves and get away the flip side of this image that he also sells is one where they're taken in and They are taken in and and they don't actually get away So we have tourist art that we see available for sale And of course the conversations that go on between people who come again and again as tourists But also I like to call them pilgrims. These are people who are searching for the roots But who often make it a practice of going to Africa going to different places in Africa sometimes the same place Sometimes often Ghana again and again because it's a pilgrimage where they go to visit these sites and where they go to visit Families and places that have become Their reclaimed home. They are in a sense returning home And so we see here in Elmina Castle one of the interiors of One of the dungeons and a group of tourists from NYU This is a group that I was with in 2005 with NYU and a tour guide. This is of course one of the most Personal spaces I think that we all experience in the castles and on the tours But I'd like to also talk about this idea that I've written about called symbolic possession of the past and Symbolic possession of the past not only in the work of visual artists people like Romare Bearden I'm showing you work here by Romare Bearden called Roots Odyssey from 1972 that he makes on the occasion of the first televised many series roots We're in artists of African descent and their allies as well as heritage tourists engage in a type of Symbolic possession of the historical past they embrace the symbols It might be the architecture of Ghana the architecture of the forts and castles of Ghana It might be the symbolic image of the slave ship that I've been writing about And they embrace these symbols in such a way as to find a Way to understand their way of being and their place in the present how they've come to be part of and African diaspora they embrace these symbols in a ritual fashion and Artists like Bearden and others that we'll see have used this image of the slave ship and I'm showing you one of the very first Imprints of this image that was made by a Committee at Plymouth in the UK in 1789 to protest The abominable state of the slave trade and in fact to try to bring an end to the slave trade in England This image that you see here in detail Showed small figures representing the enslaved and it was the first time that in the UK And it was distributed around Europe and also in other places in the United States as well by 1790 the people could actually see in the inside of the slave ship And that's how this image became so very impactful to many of you today It might be something that might seem somewhat commonplace But for many of those in the late 18th century. It was actually quite a horrific image It was also important too because in this particular Version here a broadside or a poster called description of a slave ship that was published by the London Committee of the Abolition Society in 1789 it actually shows seven numbered sections and figures so that you have an architectural plan one that enables you to Imagine a schematic in a space in which people are crowded inside of a slave ship that is going across The Atlantic Ocean for a period of seven to nine weeks during the Middle Passage and in this description that you see here It's not just a graphic representation, but Additionally, you have a description with the amount of space. It's that's allowed for each individual who's on on the ship by male female boy and girl also the kinds of Health conditions that were available on the ship as well And this is an image that was distributed in the hundreds of thousands by the end of the of the of the 18th century To the point where it really was the leading graphic image to end the slave trade and by the 1850s When they had the British patrols along the coast of West Africa a painter and a Sailor named Maynell who was part of one of those patrols Captured a ship and on the ship was able to paint from life in watercolor the conditions below the hold of the slave ship So when I talk about symbolic possession of the past I talk about this idea of repetition artists repeating The same image over and over again But to really try to come to a different understanding of what that image might mean at a different point in time And here I show you in 1928 1928 the Mexican artist Miguel Calvarubias Who's designed the in papers of a book called the adventures of an African slave trader? That's republished in 1928 using again this iconic image And he's also using the language of art of art history in 1928 where you can see The sort of modernist shape that he gives to the figures that he has representing the enslaved in the slave ship icon by 1969 Malcolm Bailey who was the first African-American artist to premiere At a gallery named Cinque after the leader of the Amistad revolt in New York City in 1969 this gallery was opened by Ernest Critchlow and Romir Bearden and Norman Lewis prominent artist in New York City to showcase the work of young black artists Bailey decides to again return to this image to Think about this moment in 1969 if you can think about the black power movement and you see in his version, which is very much almost a blueprint image He includes blacks and whites in the boat at the same time making a comment about the relationship economically between blacks and whites in 1969 also in the same year we have a Mary Baraka known as Previously known as Leroy Jones who does a play called slave ship and it's a play that is based on the history of the transatlantic slave trade and about African-American culture and African-American history But he uses The diagram of the slave ship and I'm showing you here The stage design to create a theater in the round where everyone in the audience is implicated By this schematic space and anyone in that audience could be sold to Someone or anyone in that audience could have been taken advantage of physically as many people were On the slave ship during the middle passage if we progress into the late 1970s Bob Marley uses the image again on the album cover survival and then we see also by the 1990s and the 2000s Hank Willis Thomas on the right-hand side sort of co-ops and adapts an absolute vodka ad And transforms it into thinking about absolute power We can also think about how In present day when many of us are thinking about the struggles Particularly in the American prison system and the protests against the prison industrial complex how in this work here? on the left too soon for sorry The plan of the slave ship is also crisscross with the plan for an actual prison a present-day prison Hank Willis Thomas is also taking this image and done a series of credit cards and thinking about the relationship again an Economic relationship to the history of the slave trade and the black male body in particular You can see the imprint and some of the other icons of this history That we see and the implications again on the scarred body and another work here his afro-american express Uses in graphic form these very small figures aligning The perimeter of the card itself Many artists have thought about again the transatlantic Voyage of the middle passage Deborah Willis Hank Willis Thomas his mother we've spoken about her earlier in in this conference Has worked in fabric in for many many years, and this is one of her quilts Where and she found actually a piece of fabric that had these line drawings in the background of a French slave ship and then used historical images of Sail signs and also coffolds to make a print or rather a quilt About the transatlantic slave trade and then a work that I think is really really interesting It's worn here in this photograph by David Driscoll The venerable african-american artist and art historian at the University of Maryland He had a jeweler in Hyde'sville make this this bracelet here that you can see that has this main Iconic image here on his wrist Many artists including Willie Cole have thought about the relationship between the shape of this icon and we can talk about icons and shape And the type of labor that women have done particularly through Women's and domestic work and the ironing board. This is a work by Willie Cole entitled stowage Where he actually uses the printing process to create a very large-scale Work using an ironing board and then works here by Mary net a Mary net a porter who was a fellow here at the Smithsonian some time ago Has also used vintage ironing boards again to kind of think through This image again with her Relationship to women in her family and many artists are using this this this image to talk about Again the relationship to the diaspora becoming part of a diaspora would also to tell familial stories as well And then Betty saw a noted artist once said when I interviewed her about her use of the slave ship icon Because she has again in many different instances in ritual form Used this work and that's another part of this idea of symbolic possession thinking about the ritual possession that We can think of in certain kinds of ritual performances. She said that you know for me It's a part of my DNA. That's what she said in the interview I didn't pull it out of her for the conference, but she said I feel that it is a part of my DNA Another image that I wanted to share with you which might be another familiar image is an image from Gory Island in Senegal another very I think in terms of thinking about the familiar images of the West Coast of Africa of Places that we might associate with the transatlantic slave trade with one way in which we might think about a Formation of the African diaspora is this this very symbolic and historic image of the door of no return Photographed by many including Carrie Mae Weems a contemporary artist who has a retrospective Traveling around the country now and this is one of her works from that series that she did in Ghana in 1993 Another artist to Maria Magdalena compels ponds Has photographed rather has done photography, but also installation art where she's utilized the slave ship icon to think about the way in which African religious traditions were Transformed but also retained in the New World and in this work in English and in Spanish She says let us never forget. This is called the seven powers referring to the seven powers Yoruba powers that were translated into Santaria The seven powers come by the sea and you see the figures. They are representing the seven powers Worked by Keith Piper a black British artist It's an image this image here of the slave ship one that really travels like the slave ship did Around the the black Atlantic and this in this work is ship called Jesus He uses the imprint in a multimedia form Similarly in a church in Chicago the new pound new Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church A rose window was remade using a very famous work by Tom feelings from his book Middle Passage in the central Part of the figure that's a risen Christ figure with the words remembrance Around the rose window and we return here to Cape Coast Castle to think about the meaning of the the the the Middle Passage and also the meaning as well of the door of no return the way in which this site has been marked in more Contemporary times particularly since about the mid 1990s Wherein it has been transformed into an international site Where many many diasporic Africans travel and others too from around the world where it has been marked as memorial And where as we see in this last set of slides the door of no return has been renamed The door of return. Thank you very much