joscelyn gardner (joscelyngardnerart)

Scroll of spit and spume

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In Scroll of spit and spume, the printed text from existing 17th and 18th century maritime documents is splintered into letters and syllables to hauntingly give voice to those who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas from Africa as human cargo on board slave ships. Here, these text fragments coalesce into words that allude to the unspeakable horrors faced by women on these voyages. Photographed by the artist from a cliff overlooking the ocean on the east coast of her homeland, Barbados, the very waters where these ships plied their trade, the agitated seawater froths and foams, regurgitating the putrid scum of a turbulent history that refuses to be buried.