INTRODUCTION.

To Heal A Butterfly is a series of artworks ThAT seekS to highlight an area of research in Britain’s imperial past through a combination of improvisational portraiture, digital animation and sculptural installation. The ARTWORKS have been created as a visual response to the Wilberforce Institute's research on the 'Sea Islands & Jamaica' enslavement records.

THE MULTI-MEDIA SERIES ALSO PAYS homage to West African adinkra symbols such as the Fafanto - a butterfly representing tenderness, gentleness, honesty, and fragility. ADINKRA SYMBOLS AND CALLIGRAPHY MIGHT HELP US contemplatE how different artforms might be used to DEVELOPE NEW FORMS OF MEMORIALISATION for underrepresented narratives and people in colonial archives. 

IMPROVISED PORTRAITS.

The portraits are created with carbon-based materials such as chalk, charcoal, graphite, ink and water.  These reference the essential ingredients for all human life.  They also refer to the West African organic and sculptural artforms of the subjects’ origins.

AI ANIMATION.

Digitally animated versions of the portraits displayed on screens throughout Wilberforce House Museum provide a sense of life and movement to the faceless names of peoples listed in the records. aI SOFTWARE ENABLES THE BUTTERFLIES TO TRACK RE-ANIMATED FACES.

SCULPTURE.

The sculptures, MADE WITH THE VITAL ASSISTANCE OF SCULPTOR MARCUS CORNISH, respond to Wilberforce House Museum’s Benin plaque.  In World War 2 in Hull this was split in two by bomb damage. It is a powerful metaphor for British and African relations since the colonial era. The rupture in the plaque speaks of an open wound in need of redress and recovery. THE PROJECT ACKNOWLEDGES HOW Enslavement records and displaced objects can remind us of how untended wounds carved in historic trails of power and conflict can make division in the present worse.