FELTspace Back Gallery, February 2020
Pamplemousse Garden, one of the world’s oldest botanical gardens constructed in 1770 was once a site of horticultural experimentation, where fruiting trees and crop plants such as sugar cane were cultivated for potential distribution to other countries around the world. Thus the gardens played an implicit role in the grander scheme of colonialist expansion through plantations and forced labour. Part botanical archive, part bunker, Pamplemousses Gardens (2020) reflects back on this botanical garden’s horticultural history as a utopian vision of colonial expansion into an unforeseen and unsustainable future.
Inhabiting Memories (2020)
FELTdark projection
Sarojini Lewis (Netherlands/India) with Sue Kneebone (Australia) & Vanii Suki (Madagascar)
Inhabiting Memories was filmed in Mauritius during the International Partage AIR and workshop ‘Conflict Zones’ in April 2019. The dialogue was recorded at the significant site of Le Morne which has world heritage status in recognition of it as a place of resistance to slavery during the eras of French and English occupation when the mountain was refuge to shelter escaped slaves. This project was initiated by photographer and video artist Sarojini Lewis who saw it as a way for us to share our ancestral stories and reflections in the presence of this site, and to feel and understand the shadow of this history. Sarojini Lewis describes our encounter as a crossroads of Madagascan, British and Indian origins that in the era of colonialism had crossed this space we encountered in the present. An edited 2020 version of this video will be shown for FELTdark.
ART GUIDE preview by Briony Downes
Sue Kneebone 