INTRODUCTION.

To Heal A Butterfly is a series of artworks highlighting an area of research in Britain’s imperial past through a combination of improvisational portraiture, digital animation and sculptural installation. The artworks have been created as a visual response to the Wilberforce Institute's research on the 'Sea Islands & Jamaica' enslavement records.

Video by Jonny Guardiani.

The multimedia project also pays homage to West African Adinkra symbols such as: the Fafanto - a butterfly signature representing tenderness, gentleness, honesty, and fragility; the Tabono - an Adinkra symbol representing hard work, strength, unity of purpose, and perseverance; and AYA, the Adinkra symbol for “fern”, which represents endurance, resourcefulness, courage, and will to persist even when adverse circumstances make it difficult. Adinkra symbols can help us contemplate how different artforms might be used to develop new forms of memorialisation for underrepresented narratives and people in colonial archives. 

IMPROVISED PORTRAITS.

The portraits are created with carbon-based materials such as chalk, charcoal, graphite, ink and water.  These reference the essential ingredients for all human life.  They also refer to the West African organic and sculptural artforms of the subjects’ origins.

AI ANIMATION.

Digitally animated versions of the portraits displayed on screens throughout Wilberforce House Museum provide a sense of life and movement to the faceless names of peoples listed in the records. AI software enables the butterflies to track re-animated faces.

sEE vIRTUAL GALLERY hERE.

SCULPTURE.

The sculptures, made in collaboration with Marcus Cornish, respond to Wilberforce House Museum’s Benin plaque.  In World War II the plaque was split half by bomb damage in Hull, the damaged plaque is a powerful metaphor for British and African relations since the colonial era. The rupture in the plaque speaks of an open wound in need of redress and recovery.