Artiffacts Project
Artiffacts Project
Artifact :
ar·ti·fact | \ ˈär-ti-ˌfakt \
Definition of artifact
A. an object remaining from a particular period
B. something or someone arising from or associated with an earlier time especially when regarded as no longer appropriate, relevant, or important
C. a defect in an image (such as a digital photograph) that appears as a result of the technology and methods used to create and process the image
This is where this journey starts. Summer 2019, I visited my aunt in Bermuda. I was looking through her stack of photo albums. I was floored when I came across this family tree. I had never seen it before and never knew that my family had access to this information. My uncle Derrick had done all the research and it had taken him 8 years. What’s so interesting is that most people from Bermuda, where I’m from, don’t know this information about their family’s lineage.
Some of the missing pieces of my identity were discovered that day.
I left my aunts that day feeling like I had found the greatest truth of my life that I could find. In my hand, I had Gold. Although I had my family tree, I also left with many unanswered questions. Who were these people? What were their hopes and dreams? What were their lives like? How did they manage to find the courage within themselves to continue on when their lives were wretchedly displaced?
Slave Registers, Bermuda Archives
This led me on a quest through archives to discover And
reclaim my Bermudian heritage and Caribbean ancestry for more information from the Bermuda archives. And it was there there in the basement that my whole world opened up. I went searching for photos of my own family, but ended up finding photos of black women, men and children, black families. When I saw their photos I felt a peace come over me , like all of my questions were being answered. This then prompted a thought, that my search didn’t have to end there in Bermuda, in the archives. But that I could open up my search for archival photographs of people throughout the diaspora, because we all have similar histories and experiences.
Photographs, Bermuda Archives
On instagram And here on my website, I will share images. In these works, I am bringing to the forefront their faces, and Recalling their memories, bridging together the past present and creating some foundation for a future where they aren’t forgotten. It is a meditation on time.
A Family Resemblance, Digital Collage, 2020 (found in Bermuda Archives)
The archive becomes the portal to explore relationships between archive and memory , archive and public information , archive and traces,
archive and displacement , archive and identity, and archive and time. This interrogational use of the archival photographs result in the creation of another archival structure as a means of establishing a relationship to history, evidence, information and data. figures tell stories of identity-building that collapse the traditional boundaries of time and space, while addressing intergenerational legacies.
Love Poem, Digital Collage, 2020 (Found in Bermuda Archives)
The configuration of the images produce an ambiguity where the general take precedence over the specific, showing the connection throughout the diaspora. I will use the archive as portal to transform private and public archival family images, snapshots of men, women and children hovering between disappearance and recall, into powerful monumental, linear arrangements that become meditations on public memory.
Love , Maybe, Digital Collage, 2020 (Found in Bermuda Archives)
I’ll be sharing more of these On the Artiffacts Instagram account . Follow us.
I’m collecting vintage images of Bermudian and African Diaspora People. If you’d like to submit photos of your family, please email us at artiffacts.archive@gmail.com