Indentured labour experience, Guyana, 2018. My story.
I am on a journey, one in which I hope to discover what moving across continents would have been like for my family, and others on a similar path. What hopes prompted these great moves, what were their hardships and successes? Both my parents are Guyanese as were their parents and their grandparents. My Great Great Grandparents were indentured labourers who came from India. It's a story not well known in the UK, its not something I learnt in school, yet it was the British Empire that moved indentured workers so far from home. My work in this series seeks to tell their story and, in some way, to express what life must have been life for them and to give them a voice so they are not forgotten. I have chosen mediums and images that I hope express the conflict of emotions that this brings for me and I imagine must have been there for my grandparents and great grandparents. I salute and thank then, I would not be here to have the privilege to tell this story in art if not for their hard work and determination.
For Babu and Muradhan Khan. “
I am on a journey, one in which I hope to discover what moving across continents would have been like for my family, and others on a similar path. What hopes prompted these great moves, what were their hardships and successes? Both my parents are Guyanese as were their parents and their grandparents. My Great Great Grandparents were indentured labourers who came from India. It's a story not well known in the UK, its not something I learnt in school, yet it was the British Empire that moved indentured workers so far from home. My work in this series seeks to tell their story and, in some way, to express what life must have been life for them and to give them a voice so they are not forgotten. I have chosen mediums and images that I hope express the conflict of emotions that this brings for me and I imagine must have been there for my grandparents and great grandparents. I salute and thank then, I would not be here to have the privilege to tell this story in art if not for their hard work and determination.
For Babu and Muradhan Khan. “
