Indentured bodies/embodiments of indenture: A curatorial response

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If I should ever die

Return me to the fire

If I should live again

Return me to myself.

Mahadai Das (1954–2003), excerpt from ‘Return Me To The Fire’ ¹

How does the indentured body transcend the condition of indentureship? As scholars, curators, artists, poets and writers, what work is required of us so that as we rightly account for the violated, commodified or inventoried body we do not eclipse our longing to know the person and the self. How do we move between the indentured body and the [name] subjected to indentureship? Notice the difference in language — one affixes an anonymized identity, the latter indicts the system.

In her poem ‘Return Me To The Fire’, Indo-Guyanese poet Mahadai Das implores, ‘If I should live again/Return me to myself’. In offering a curatorial response to this special issue on Indentured Bodies/Embodiments of Indenture, I kept coming back to these words by Das. In them, the poet implicitly cautions against further anonymizing her. And explicitly reminds us of the dual work we are called to do. First, redress the ‘fire’ — tell the impossible stories of violence. And second, return to the daughter, son, mother, father, brother, sister, friend that has been lost. In other words, return to the loved, desired, seen self.

The artwork curated for this issue punctuates its timely and urgent scholarship by illuminating the beauty, poetry, power and vulnerability of the body even whilst subjected to the indignities of indenture. In Family Heirloom, Alka Dass intervenes in pre-existing photographs to stitch together the under-examined histories of Indian Indentured labourers brought to South Africa. Guyanese-born Nicholas D’Ornellas’s handwoven screen-printed textile work Adrian–w/void engages the emotional cartography of absence, separation, loss and grief deeply embedded in the inheritance of indenture. Fijian-Australian artist Shivanjani Lal’s installation Yaad Karo is rooted in her sobering question, ‘How does one remember that they are a body with capacity and not just a colonized body?’ ² In Relative, South African artist Sancintya Mohini Simpson inscribes a series of handwritten Hindi vowels, consonants and conjuncts onto the photographs of her siblings. With their gazes directly confronting the viewer, their bodies speak. They are literally and metaphorically marked with the memory and language that carry their ancestral stories. Finally, Trinidadian artist Tessa Alexander uses collage to bond the women of indenture and slavery in shared experiences of motherhood. In Remembering Our Foremothers, the artist frames her protagonists in reverence with halos and refashions them in dual Indian and African royal traditions of textiles and painting styles.

Alka Dass

Figures 1–3

Figure 1

Alka Dass, Family Heirloom, cyanotype and thread drawing, 2023, 100 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. @alka_the_artist.

Figure 2

(Detail) Alka Dass, Family Heirloom, cyanotype and thread drawing, 2023, 100 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. @alka_the_artist.

Figure 3

(Detail) Alka Dass, Family Heirloom, cyanotype and thread drawing, 2023, 100 × 100 cm. Courtesy of the artist. @alka_the_artist.

Shivanjani Lal

Figure 4

Figure 4

Shivanjani Lal, as part of Yaad Karo, Metro Arts, Brisbane 2019. Details: Suruu [To Begin]: 2019. Black and white cotton rag photos from my family archive, Sari’s from maternal and paternal grandmothers, mother and artist’s own archive, Haldi (turmeric). Courtesy of the artist. shivanjanilal.com

Sancintya Mohini Simpson

Figure 5

Figure 5

Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Relative, triptych, archival pigment print with ink, looped sound, 2015, 42 × 52 cm each. Courtesy of the artist. sancintya.com

Tessa Alexander

Figure 6

Figure 6

Tessa Alexander, Remembering Our Foremothers, 2023, from the series In Search of My Grandmothers’ Gardens. Archive images, collage and watercolour on watercolour paper. Courtesy of the artist. tessaalexanderart.com

Nicholas D’Ornellas

Figure 7

Figure 7

Nicholas Dornellas, Adrian–w/void, 2022, hand woven & quilted screenprint using appliqué technique on assorted fabrics, 60 × 40.5 in. Courtesy of the artist. nicholasdornellas.com

Notes

1.

Mahadai Das, ‘Return Me To The Fire’, in A Leaf in His Ear: Collected Poems. Peepal Tree Press: Leeds, UK, 2010.

2.

Shivanjani Lal, Aise Aise Hai (unpublished dissertation), Masters in Artists Film and Moving Image, University of London, Goldsmiths, 2021.