The Singh Twins

Internetpräsenz

Website: https://www.singhtwins.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesinghtwins_art/

Works

Indiennes: The Extended Triangle
from the Slaves of Fashion series

Date
2018

Material
Mixed Media

Description

The title of this work refers to connections between India and the three cyclical stages of the “triangular trade”—in which goods were shipped from Europe to Africa; enslaved people to the Americas; and plantation produce to Europe. The Singh Twins reference Joanna Boyce Wells’s portrait of the Fanny Eaton (1835–1924), a Jamaican-born British model, shown wearing fabric made in India for the eighteenth-century French market. These fabrics, known in France as Indiennes, were traded at the port of Nantes in exchange for enslaved Africans. Other goods used as currency in the slave trade, such as guns, beads, and cowrie shells, are also depicted. At the top of the artwork, the badge of the India Natal shipping line is visible, a company that brought forced laborers from India to sugar plantations in South Africa after slavery was abolished. Toussaint Louverture, a former slave and revolutionary who led Haiti to independence but died in French captivity in 1803, is also depicted.