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The latest exhibit at the University of Winnipeg’s Gallery 1C03 is an act of reclamation and decolonization.
Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories tells the story of Indo-indentureship from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries through a feminist lens. The many her-stories contained within the exhibit are shared through mixed media based in ceramics and photography created by Toronto-based artist Heidi McKenzie.
The experience of Indo-Caribbean women in indentureship became a personal one for McKenzie over a decade ago. “My whole world changed about thirteen years ago when my cousin came back from Trinidad with a photograph of my great-great-grandmother,” she explained in an interview on Morning Light.
McKenzie’s ancestor came from Kolkata to Guyana as part of the efforts of the British colonizers to replace slave labour in the Caribbean after slavery had been abolished in the kingdom in the 1830’s. After seeing her great-great-grandmother in that photo, McKenzie started doing research into the lives of the women who made the voluntary journey to the Caribbean to perform hard labour in the region’s agricultural industry.
Despite the voluntary nature of the trip, research suggests that the women, who largely came alone looking to escape the social constraints of India at the time, didn’t fully know what kind of a life they were signing up for. “They couldn’t access the banking systems because they were illiterate,” explains McKenzie, who noted that the women were paid in silver shillings that they often would fashion into jewelry that they wore around their necks in the fields.
That jewelry is one of the elements that makes up the exhibit, along with images of women who, like McKenzie, have found their family’s her-stories in the Indo-Caribbean indentureship. Those images have been superimposed onto ceramics that McKenzie has created.
“It’s one of our oldest mediums,” says McKenzie about why she uses ceramics in her work. “It’s very tactile, it’s very haptic, it’s very process-oriented in the creation of a thing. But at the same time… I drop this on the floor, and it will smash into a thousand pieces. So, there’s that tension of the fragility and permanence as well.”
Gallery 1C03 is hosting events surrounding the stories of Indo-Caribbean indentureship to further the discussions that have helped to form McKenzie’s work. On April 1, they will host an event called Sharing Indo-Caribbean HerStories in the gallery for people who, like McKenzie, have found their ancestors in this experience and wish to reclaim their family stories. “I don’t think it’s very common that people have access to the images and stories of their ancestors who came from the ship,” says McKenzie, who notes that the history of indentureship was erased for a century by colonialist education practices.
In spite of this, McKenzie has been reconnected to several relatives she did not know she had through her work on this exhibit. After a previous iteration of the exhibit in another city, McKenzie received an email from someone wanting to engage over the work that turned out to be her first cousin.
“Then, this morning – I’m not kidding – this morning, I got an email from someone saying, ‘Hey, I saw this article in Guyana that you wrote about your show, and I think I’m your cousin!” McKenzie laughs.
The discovery continues for anyone who visits Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories at Gallery 1C03, which is open Monday through Friday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the University of Winnipeg and runs until April 25. The Sharing Indo-Caribbean HerStories event takes place from 4 to 6 p.m. on April 1. For more information, visit the Gallery 1C03 website.
