Art / Jessica Ashman
Jessica Ashman’s installation at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery explores exploitation in botanical sciences
Jessica Ashman is a multidisciplinary artist and award-winning animator, blending traditional techniques as well as music (as Spirit Sigh), installation and performance.
In a commission funded by the 20/20 programme at the University of the Arts London (UAL)’s Decolonising Institute, for the last 18 months she has been working with pieces from the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery collection, as well as the British Empire and Commonwealth and Natural History collections.
The results will be shown in a new installation at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, opening on February 22 and running until the end of July, called ‘Those that do not smile will kill me’: Decolonising Jamaican Flora.
is needed now More than ever
Using an eclectic mix of silk painting, animation, soundscape and costumed musical performance, Ashman’s creative responses to the project “portray narratives of how enslaved and indigenous people engaged with the land for survival, resistance and celebration to form their own ‘paradise’”.
Jessica Ashman, Embryo Woman
When conducting her research, Ashman looked in detail at the specimens assembled by two 18th century western biologists working in Jamaica: Bristol’s Arthur Broughton (1758-1796), who collected local flowers and plants in the 1780s and 90s, and the illustrated ‘Elegancies of Jamaica’ manuscripts of the island’s botany from so-called ‘pro-slavery priest’, John Lindsay (1729-1788).
Rather than working alone, it is very likely that both men relied on the insights of enslaved Africans on the island to deepen their own understanding of Jamaican flora and fauna, as well as on their practical help in collecting specimens from forests.
Ashman cites how “both these collections demonstrate extraction and exploitation rife in botanical sciences, seeking instead to reveal more about the many unacknowledged people who have contributed meaningfully to our knowledge.
“My time researching in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery’s collection felt like a constant quest to find the stories of these people (some of whom were probably my ancestors) who are ‘missing’ in the archive, but I soon realised that I would have to be the one to bring out these narratives in my work.”
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Jessica Ashman: ‘Those that do not smile will kill me’: Decolonising Jamaican Flora is at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery on February 22-July 27, from 10am-5pm daily (closed Mondays).
This commission has been made possible by 20/20, a three-year funded programme led by the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute, with funding from Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England and UAL.
All photos: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery
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