Sunday, June 26, 2022

Who Chose The Sea

Another installation near where I left off yesterday in the Ottawa Art Gallery had a deeply unsettling effect. To put it into context requires the display panels. For Those Who Chose The Sea is a multimedia work masterminded by Stanley Wany, combining video footage of the Atlantic with a mixed media illustration and a wooden structure. The structure is a reproduction of a section of a slave ship, giving the visitor a sense of how cramped they really were.


As the sign notes before you go in, you can actually move within the cramped quarters of the structure and see for yourself just how confining it is.


The video screen is at the head of the room and gives a sense of what it might have been like on an ocean voyage. How many, knowing they were heading into slavery, might have, given the chance, jumped overboard?


The last shot, seen within, was taken while I was kneeling, the upper decking above me, reinforcing how confining these ships would have been. Three feet of height from lower deck to upper deck. That's it.

22 comments:

  1. Important exhibit, as Frightening as it is heartbreaking

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  2. Hello,
    I agree it is an important exhibit and sad part of history. Take care, have a happy new week!.

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  3. What we have been willing to do to our fellow humans (and continue to do for that matter) is something that should disturb us all.

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  4. Sad. How can humans be so cruel to each other. And just look to Russia. Same still.

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  5. Es una lamentable parte de la historia. Separar a las personas de sus familiares y de su hábitat, para ser vendidas como esclavos.
    Feliz domingo.

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  6. @Maywyn: it made a deep impression on me.

    @Eileen: an awful aspect of history.

    @David: that is true.

    @Iris: the inhumanity of humanity can be an awful thing.

    @Francisco: thank you.

    @Ventana: thanks.

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  7. One cannot even imagine the conditions and the cruelty.

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  8. ...I'm happy to have both feet on the ground!

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  9. Fascinating. And how deeply tragic.

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  10. that sounds like a very compelling exhibit.

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  11. Quite impressive and confronting, I think.

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  12. ~ Tragic times of history ~ hope we are not doomed to repeat it ~ Display is a great awakener ~

    Wishing you good health, laughter and love in you days,

    A ShutterBug Explores,
    aka (A Creative Harbor)

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  13. Very sad! There are so many depressing stories like this throughout history.

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  14. That would certainly drive home the horrors these people were put through.

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  15. An important exhibition but very sad.

    All the best Jan

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  16. Very difficult to comprehend, take in, understand.

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  17. I respect the seas and oceans and prefer my feet on land. A moving post.

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  18. I get a bit claustrophobic in small spaces like that unless it's an open space so I admire those who were on it, as sad as it is.

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  19. @Marie: horrifying.

    @Tom: I can relate.

    @Magiceye: that's the idea.

    @Jeanie: that it was.

    @Sharon: I thought so.

    @Jan: very much so.

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  20. @Carol: I agree.

    @Bill: Unfortunately true.

    @RedPat: it has that effect.

    @Jan: definitely.

    @Joanne: I agree.

    @Gemel: the most I've been on the sea has been a ferry across a strait to PEI.

    @Amy: it would definitely be claustrophobic.

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