In part one of our series on the Black Atlantic we're asking the question what is the Black
Atlantic? We'll be looking at the work of Turner, Ingrid Pollard, Isaac Julien and Yinka Shonibare
Black Atlantic is a phrase coined by Paul Gilroy. Paul Gilroy wrote a book inviting us
to think about the legacy of slavery, the Black Atlantic is an idea but we can also think about
the Black Atlantic as a tool, as a map, as a way of seeing, it allows us to navigate our past
and orient ourselves in the present as a way to look towards the future let's imagine the ocean
let's imagine the routes that slave ships took from Europe to Africa to the Americas to the Caribbean
Gilroy postulates that these routes across the Atlantic are in a way inscribed into the ocean
and into the lives of African diasporic people today let's imagine that as points on a map
that together make up a shared history a shared culture a shared identity but also a route towards
possibility reinvention towards saying this is how I position myself on the map of history
You don't have to be Black to engage with the idea of the Black Atlantic
I think at its heart the concept is really an invitation towards empathy to say let's
think about how the modern western world is constructed, it's constructed in part through
the forced migration of Black people but the legacy of that is a shared multicultural society
that we all live in if we respect and honour the idea of a world which we all have a shared stake
in whatever our colour then the Black Atlantic is one of the routes towards understanding that
If you're an artist that speaks of culture identity experience imagining history
collective memory shared past then you're talking about the Black Atlantic
The British Library is an installation by Yinka Shonibare of 6328 books wrapped in this Dutch wax
batik fabric inscribed with the names of different figures many of them have contributed to culture
some of them are very resistant to the idea of foreigners the whole installation is a
conversation about how Britain has gone back and forth arguing about the role that immigrants and
people of colour have played in the identity of britain since the arrival of the Windrush
When you stand within the British Library what you recognise is that
this is a space without hierarchy, there's no one book that's more important than another I think
Yinka Shonibare is proposing what Britain can be a place of togetherness a place of beautiful
patterns that are made across time through shared histories
Turner's Slave Ship is based in part on the real story of a ship called the Zong coming from
Africa to the Caribbean the captain of the Zong threw overboard living African people who'd been
enslaved and were on the ship and then afterwards tried to claim the money back from insurance
Turner paints a hellscape red skies ferocious fish limbs still with manacles and chains attached to
them it's a painting of deep compassion that invites us to think about the physical and moral
cost of slavery this painting asks can you create a work of art that is sublime and terrifying
and sobering and heartbreaking at the same time
Ingrid Pollard's Oceans Apart is a very simple set of photographs in an English seaside beneath each
photograph is a piece of text some of them written by her father bidding farewell to her to Britain
Ingrid Pollard is thinking about identity as a dual thing what does it feel like to be Black and
British what does it feel like to be an inheritor of a legacy of immigration but also to be born
into a country which has been at different times both open to that immigration and hostile to it
Paradise Omeros by Isaac Julien begins with a young Black man walking into the sea
apparently for a moment drowning in the way that so many millions of Black people did drown and die
in the Atlantic Ocean but this figure emerges in a grim concrete London
it's a dazzling film it's a three screen work it's about possibility it's about cosmopolitanism
it's about complexity it's about what happens
when the other the sometimes alien becomes present becomes resident horror doesn't follow beauty does
in this episode we've asked what is the Black Atlantic
in part two we'll be considering questions of identity and nationhood