joscelyn gardner

In the confined space of an 18th century Prisoner's Cell (at the Barbados Museum), the multimedia installation A Tiny Prick probes the metaphorical prison of the postcolonial Creole conscience. In place of the prison cot, pillows with white pillowcases bearing lithographic "portraits" of Creole women (from the Creole Portraits series) are embroidered in white thread with the names of women lost to anonymity on the Caribbean plantation. White female hands in the act of embroidering (in an early 19th century photograph and in a contemporary video projection) juxtaposed with wall text from Toni Morrison's Beloved speak to white shame and accountability and to the indelible stamp of slavery that remains branded on the postcolonial Creole memory.

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This site-specific installation was exhibited as part of White Skin, Black Kin: "speaking the unspeakable" , an intervention into four galleries at the Barbados Museum, 2004. Download White Skin, Black Kin Catalogue HERE.

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