Illuminating the Legacy of Slavery in RI Projection and Performative Reading Series
Still from video projection created in collaboration with The Womxn Project. Based on period wallpaper patterns from the Cranston Historical Society interior, cotton in bloom and Lowell Cloth (fabric woven from cotton grown by enslaved peoples and sold back to enslaved people for clothing. Rhode Island’s textile history had a huge role in producing this cloth and supporting the practice of slavery.
August 23rd is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, designated by UNESCO to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade. On August 26th, 2021, (originally planned for 23rd but this is the rain date) The Womxn Project Education Fund (TWPEF) is launching the first of three nights of staging a series of outdoor public art interventions combining light projections and narrative performances, to illuminate Rhode Island’s role in American slavery.
On July 4, 2020 TWPEF implemented a guerilla-girl approach to public art at Linden Place in Bristol. They projected images and graphics accompanied by live narration, to bring attention to the fact that Linden Place is not just a beautiful building in a charming town, but a symbol of wealth built upon human brutality. Staging the event on July 4th was a way to challenge our assumptions about what freedom and liberty mean in a country that was mired in the slave trade for centuries.
TWPEF sees this current performance series as an expansion of the Bristol project, with a more ambitious series of projections, performances and partnerships (see details below for each town’s events and collaborators).
With grant support from the RI Council of the Humanities and RI State Council on the Arts, we have brought together artists and scholars to create narratives based on research, while performers are working with creative writers to bring original reads to each site specific location.
While being a live event, it will also be live streamed on Facebook in an effort to continue to allow people affected by COVID issues/concerns a safe and accessible relationship to a unique perspective into histories in Providence and at lesser known sites in Woonsocket and Cranston.
These projections and performances will teach forgotten histories, evoke the deep human emotion that this history holds to this day, and motivate attendees to work towards an anti-racist future.
It is only through understanding our past that we can fight for a better future.
Learn more about the video series here. Special thanks to project orangizers, Cristina DiChiera, Daria-Lyric Montaquila and Jocelyn Foye.
September 20: CRANSTON
Location: Cranston City Hall & Cranston Public Library
Time: September 20 at 8pm & 9pm
Performer: Tammy Brown
Visual Artist: Lois Harada
Writer: Daria-Lyric Montaquila
Historic Scholar: Dr. C. Morgan Grefe
Cranston – named for the three-term Governor Cranston, protector of pirates and profiteers, captain and slave holder who helped to secure Rhode Island’s domination over the North American trade in slaves. On Monday we will consider the bodies that disappeared under his Governorship and we will tell stories of resistance.
Still from video projection created in collaboration with The Womxn Project.