CHRIS THURMAN: Moments of courage and dignity rescued from oblivion
Sosa Joseph’s exhibition is an attempt to reimagine the lives of people who were subjected to the Indian Ocean slave trade
Two new exhibitions at Stevenson gallery in Cape Town challenge us to dwell in the paradox that beauty and brutality not only coexist but are often mutually enabling — a truth that is by turns terrifying and comforting.
Indian artist Sosa Joseph’s The Hushed History of Oblivion is an attempt to reimagine, and to redeem from history, the lives of people who were subjected to the Indian Ocean slave trade. The germ of the work was Joseph’s recognition of geographical echoes between her own movements across the coastal region of Kerala and those of a slave girl, known only as Anima, some two centuries previously. This expanded into a global visual narrative of slave life, from Southeast Asia to the Cape Colony and Central America...
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