| Abstract: | Abstract The paper seeks to explore the art historical dimension of Babette Wainwright's artistic preoccupation as it intersects with the emerging field of African diaspora and visual culture studies. To those unfamiliar with the visual vocabulary of Babette Wainwright's artistic preoccupation, her evocative and visually compelling imagery can be alienating. It is a scopic event of phenomenal dimension. One is either drawn by its charming and intriguing nature or one is simply repelled by it. It is an experience that compels the viewer to participate in its ‘communal visuality’, thus involving a tripartite dialogue between the gallery space, the work and the viewer. Right there in the middle of gallery, Wainwright suspended three wrecked ceramic boats in mid air, attached with the aid of a fishing string to the ceiling of the exhibition space. And on the floor, she displayed remnants of lost humanity, severed limbs, wreckages of ship and cargo, amidst the detritus of wasted lives, the gripping evidence of the white sand on the gallery floor. The entire atmosphere is very eerie and surreal. By one magical command, we are transported to the bottom of the ocean to view the evidence of man's inhumanity in its genocidal dimensions. Taken together, these material remains, represent vestiges and echoes of a bygone era. Here in poignant manner she has captured and immobilized more than three hundred years of the dispersal, enslavement, and catastrophic arrival of peoples of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. |
