Sugar Coated started as an exploration of the connections between the slate industry, the Penrhyn estate and Jamaica.
I was inspired by Dr Marian Gwyn’s research, specifically learnings around the ideology and thinking at the plantations at the time. I was struck by the excuses given for unsuccessful breeding programs of enslaved women. I wanted to explore how easily things can be covered over and not spoken about. Adding the glow in the dark pigment to the sugar demonstrates that the traces are still there (in plain sight), even if we can’t necessarily see them in the light of day.
October 1804, Richard Pennant writes to his agent: ‘It seems surprising that … 229 field women besides house women and the others should produce only 11 children’. (Bangor University Archives, Penrhyn 1329)
The Agent writes in October 1805: ‘… their own imprudences in going out visiting at night the neighbouring estates, consequently colds, obstructions, other maladies that women are subject to ensure, which are enemies to procreation…I did endeavour to persuade all my people … to do away with that rambling at night but I found it a tiresome and arduous task and gave it up as a bad job.’ (Bangor University Archives, Penrhyn 1355)
The project has been linked to my own heritage as a woman from Caribbean descent. The Rush by Olympia Vitalis was an incredible piece of music to work with; the lyrics explore the Windrush and how it has affected the generations that followed. I wanted to confront the past and show that it can’t be left uncovered - it needs to be confronted and spoken about in different ways.
‘I don’t wish the negroes and cattle to be overworked.’ – Richard Pennant (Bangor University Archives, Penrhyn 1332)
Performance is something I haven’t explored myself much, it is outside of my comfort zone as an artist. Choosing to make this a performance art piece was a nod to the fact that we need to step outside our comfort zone sometimes, and that the best things happen creatively once you have faced that discomfort. There’s a sense of freedom, an ‘A-HA’ moment, and things can be created in a way that has never been seen before. If I’m willing to take a risk, so can everyone else. I wanted to celebrate that dance and movement are inherently connected to Black culture and have brought Global Majority People together. I specifically wanted to include sugar busts of myself and deconstruct my own self, because this has been a journey of self-discovery as well as the research and conversations born out of the project.
Sugar Coated is a part of Perspective(s) which is a collaboration between the Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, which seeks to bring about a step change in how the visual arts and heritage sector reflects the cultural and ethnic diversity of our society. The project is supported by the Welsh Government as part of a collective effort to meet the culture and heritage goals of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan.
VIOLET, Jasmine, Sugar Coated © Jasmine Violet / Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales
