In your projects, you investigate the relationships between the colonial past and the contemporary recomposition of memory and identity in Mauritius islands using a mixed media approach. Can you explain something about your artistic language?

SHIRAZ BAYJOO (SB): I work across a wide spectrum of media; I feel different forms of making bring you into different proximities to subject and storytelling, allowing for greater sensibility and a more nuanced approach to different ideas even within the same body of work. I begin most projects with painting, it’s the medium I trained in and I guess I approach most of my thinking through this. Painting acts almost like a sketchbook in this way for me. I work a lot with archives, particularly archival photographs, frequently placing these in my paintings. The archive materials, which focus upon European colonial legacies, are predominantly authored through a White lens. The paintings that are created through multiple abstract layers, allow me to emotionally re-position the archive photographs, elevating, re-focusing, and ultimately reclaiming the gaze upon black and brown bodies. In this way, I can critique the racial order upon which the photographs were created, and its from this space that I conceive my installations which can be made up of video, sculptural and photographic works. I seek to create a constellation in my installations, where objects and works speak to each other, presenting multiple layers of language that I hope present the complexity of these histories and its effect on our lives and senses of who we are today. Whilst allowing for different points of entry from which the audience can navigate its endless re-telling.

Farquhar No.2. Acrylic, resin, wood, (17.5 x 17.5 x 1.5cm), 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

Installation view, Edge Effects, Fort Adelaide, Port Louis, Mauritius 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

Fig. 5. Acrylic, resin, wood, (17.5 x 17.5 x 1.5cm), 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

During the elaboration of your projects, do you collaborate with other artists? What’s the research behind your works?

SB: Collaboration has become a bigger part of my practice in recent years, working with artists across different regions in Africa and Asia has been important, both through the community and support this brings, particularly when exploring painful and often violent narratives, but also in the support of research and creation of more complex projects. Collaborations are not only with other artists but include historians, both amateur and institutional, as well as with activists, community, and cultural groups. Knowledge sharing is a big part of this, as is the sharing of platform and opportunity, in seeking a more equitable way in which we work and distribute resources.

“Searching for Libertalia” is a work on the redefinition of memory, inspired by the cult book “A General History of the Pyrates” by Captain Charles Johnson, in which the imagined settlement of Libertalia is established by the fictional character Captain Misson on the island of Madagascar. This is the starting point for an artistic reflection on liberation movements in post-colonial Africa. In the artistic installation, everything speaks, the frames too. Can you explain to us how you conceive this project? What are the main themes?

SB: I came across this book very early on in my research, at a time when I was shifting the focus of my practice back towards the Indian Ocean. The story of Misson and Libertalia presents early European imaginings of Africa. The book in this way offers an opportunity to unpack the language of race and otherness, a language that is solidified by subsequent European empires. But it wasn’t for several years before I decided to work with the story directly. In 2014 I undertook a research trip in Madagascar, using some of the books as a loose reference in plotting a course of sites to visit. This brought me to several coastal settlements, which included former Dutch and French EIC slave ports, and of course to Diego Suarez where the fabled Libertalia settlement is described. Here I observed several exposed and seemingly untouched artillery sites built by the Vichy administration during the Second World War. The artillery was built to repel allied forces before Britain invaded Madagascar and handed it to the Free French Army being led by De Gaulle. These sites led me to consider what took place in European colonies during this period, and particularly those that fell under fascist regimes. The question of Vichy in the Tropics!

Politique des Races part one (triptych). Acrylic and resin on Sapele and Birch wood (179.5 x 72 x 2.5 cm). Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

Politique des Races part one (triptych) (detail). Acrylic and resin on Sapele and Birch wood (179.5 x 72 x 2.5 cm). Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

It is from here the project "Searching for Libertalia" unfolded into a pseudo archive, where archive materials, documentary footage, and new anthropological writing is enveloped by the myth of Misson’s story. “A General History of the Pyrates” is written by Captain Charles Johnson, and is widely believed to be a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe. The anti crown sentiment of the book is a likely reason for Defoe’s use of a pseudonym. Defoe was known for several highly critical texts during this period of European aristocracy, and Misson’s story is no exception. The author expresses several anti-slavery sentiments and speaks of the creation of a free state, which is ultimately doomed in the emerging age of geopolitical alliances. However, Defoe’s description of Libertalia presents almost like a blueprint of how to create your own free state and it's from here that its mythology amongst libertarians arises. The project brings together my own documentary material created during this trip and plots the rise and fall of Madagascar's tribal kingdoms, the colonial invasion of the island by the French, and its subsequent fight for independence after the Second World War. The project raises questions of unionism vs independence in a post-colonial Africa, the repetition of history, and the endless cycles of violence witnessed upon the land.

Searching for Libertalia (Installation view), New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2019. Image credit Reece Straw

Searching for Libertalia (Installation view), Wooden Sapele Vitrine with archive photographs, ceramic sculptures and photo-etchings, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2019. Image credit Reece Straw

Searching for Libertalia (Installation view), Wooden Sapele Vitrine with archive photographs, ceramic sculptures and photo-etchings, New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2019. Image credit Reece Straw

Looking at your works, it’s clear that there’s a constant return of objects, photographs, and artistic tools that create a poetic rhythm. Can you explain to us why you choose to reutilize some parts of your projects for the new ones?

SB: There are continuous overlapping themes throughout all my projects, as I mentioned before I work across different mediums in order to bring the audience into different degrees of proximity and sensitivity to the narratives presented. These different forms of making whilst they belong to their own collections and have their own research and aesthetic demands, also create important bridges in the language of my installations. By bringing together works from different collections I can create multiple layers of language and texture that I feel is ultimately important in navigating the complexity of these narratives.

“En famille” is a project where pictures are recomposed and colored with vivid textures, a reappropriation of memory passing by the elaboration of images. Can you explain something about this project?

SB: The demise of the French patriarchal-familial system gives way to the Victorian project, and the ‘engineering and civilizing of empire’ commences. The "En Famille" works lay bare the final chapters of the French patriarchal project, through a series of portraits from a colonial family album, where the photographer focused upon the servants and slaves of the household. There is a very little written account of the lives and the experiences of the slaves of Mauritius, this collection presents a rare insight. Between the intimate portraits of the sitter and the fixation of the photographer, we can explore the possibilities of their dynamic, the racial order within which they are created. The portraits offer a possibility to reflect upon the lives of those deemed unworthy enough to be recorded. The portraits are laid into wooden trays originally used by my aunt who was a jeweler in the 1950s. The stackable trays are reminiscent of archival cases and made from the same tropical wood commonly sourced for museum vitrines in Mauritius in the mid 20th century. The wooden frames support thin washes and strokes of iridescent paint, sanded away any re-laid in numerous layers. In each gaze we mark the lives of these individuals, for a moment we are witness to their presence, brilliant and gem-like. We contemplate what has passed, before their release once again.

En Famille No.3. Acrylic, resin and photographic transfer on wood (47.5 x 30.5 cm), 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

En Famille No.6. Acrylic, resin and photographic transfer on wood (47.5 x 30.5 cm), 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

En Famille No.9. Acrylic, resin and photographic transfer on wood (47.5 x 30.5 cm), 2016. Image credit Shiraz Bayjoo

LINKS
Shiraz Bayjoo (website)