American, British, Dutch and Wampanoag artists explore the colonisation of America

21 February 2022

As the exhibition Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage opens at The Box in Plymouth, we bring you Crafts magazine's review of its first iteration in Massachusetts

M Rachael Arauz

21 February 2022

The Past As Future Artifact (Mask 2) by Jeffrey Gibson, 2020. Photo: courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

In 1620, the Mayflower, a ship carrying about 130 people, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from the south-west coast of England, to arrive on land inhabited by the Wampanoag people and now known as Massachusetts. The passengers established the ‘Plymouth Colony’, named after the city they had left behind. One of the oldest settlements in the United States, the colony inaugurated an era of nationbuilding, British expansion and Indigenous genocide that has only recently been addressed in museum contexts.

In Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage, 10 artists representing the American, British, Dutch and Wampanoag communities involved in the original 1620 encounter explore this myth-laden period of history. The exhibition launched at the Fuller Craft Museum in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, beforetravelling to The Box in Plymouth, UK (26 Feb–5 June) – institutions at the start and end of the Mayflower’s route.

Wood, Water and Distance by Annette Bellamy in collaboration with Lena Amason, Sonya Kelliher Combs, Tommy Joseph, Rebecca Lyon, Da-Ka Xeen Mehner, and Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, 2020. Photo: courtesy the artist and Anchorage Museum, photo Chris Arend

The introductory text for Another Crossing highlights the project’s grounding in sitebased research and historic processes. Guest curator Glenn Adamson, in collaboration with the two museums, selected the participating artists. Within the group, the imbalance between artists who represent the Indigenous population of North America, and those who do not, suggests the devastating legacy of this historic encounter.

The artists met one another as the project began, gathering in spring 2019 for research trips to both Plymouths. They were each asked to make new work using only 17th-century techniques and materials – a directive that established a provocative collapse between the haptic sensibility of traditional ways of making and contemporary art practice. Developing an exhibition without known works of art is risky, yet that leap of faith meant that the artists and the institutions approached the subject with fresh eyes and their collaboration has ensured the works come together powerfully without privileging a singular interpretive voice.

Developing an exhibition without known works of art is risky, yet that leap of faith meant that the artists and the institutions approached the subject with fresh eyes

Nonetheless, the installation literally centres the work of the only Wampanoag artist in the group. Jonathan James-Perry’s Mishoon, a traditionally carved dugout canoe, is the first object to confront visitors at eye level. Suspended from the ceiling, the form dramatises the story of journey and encounter at the heart of Another Crossing. The vessel invites passage into the exhibition and across time. A striking alternative to the ghost of the Mayflower itself, the boat carries ancestral medicine bundles that provide symbolic return for ancestors lost to the trauma of colonisation. In the accompanying wall text, James-Perry is acknowledged as the exhibition’s ‘conscience’ – perhaps an unfair weight to place on a single artist.

Aqua Vitae Jugs by Michelle Erickson. Photo: Robert Hunter

Below Mishoon is a work by British artist Katie Schwab that brings the historic confrontation between Wampanoag and British peoples directly into the exhibition. Schwab’s Welcome Mat (Unfinished), made in collaboration with weaver Felicity Irons, lies on the floor at the entrance. The mat of braided rushes, unfinished at its end, offers an ironic counterpoint to the Wampanoag vessel that hangs above. A welcome mat can suggest care or trampled disregard upon arrival.

The curatorial decision to present the two pieces in proximity proposes the power of contemporary art to address a history of colonial entitlement. While Schwab’s welcome mat offers a multivalent interpretation of arrival, David Clarke’s Poor Trait unambiguously confronts the violence that settlers perpetrated on Indigenous peoples.

Mishoon by Jonathan James-Perry with Poor Trait by David Clarke

To create this abstract work, the British metalsmith compressed handwoven linen within a large disk of melted lead gunshot. The viewer’s eye strains to distinguish the fragile textile from the dark, rough surface of the cast metal. Suspended from a sharp hook, the work exudes an oppressive weight and manifests the violence of a colonising force.

The theme of erasure is taken up by artist Sonya Clark, who typically engages the tangle of meaning between language and materials to address the history of African-American experiences. Here, Clark’s work layers onto the colonising narrative the implications of slavery that followed in the years soon after 1620. She uses a typeface she invented, based on curls from her own hair, to print 17th-century style broadsides of Wampanoag and Christian texts, and the cast metal alphabet is displayed next to the printed sheets on handmade paper.

Power Tools: press / text / land / language (detail) by Sonya Clark, 2020. Photo: Jonathan Jackson

Clark also acquired soil from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to spell the Wampanoag name for their land – Patuxet – across a low pedestal. Ambient vibrations in the exhibition agitate the work, rendering the text blurrier, a metaphor for the erasure of Indigenous identity. Her work invites viewers to engage with the perceived illegibility of cultures and histories that we have not taken the time to know.

Too often museums have assumed their authority to tell the stories of other people

Although James-Perry is the only Wampanoag artist, additional voices of Indigenous people from across Turtle Island (North America) are present. For her installation Wood, Water and Distance, artist Annette Bellamy collaborated with six Indigenous artists of Alaskan Native Heritage, each to create a boat using materials and symbolic forms personal to them. Artist Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee) is among the best-known US-based Indigenous artists. His masks of woven reeds invest materials such as malachite, porcupine quills and sinew with allusions to science fiction and colonial armour.

The Past As Future Artifact (Mask 2) by Jeffrey Gibson. Photo: Photo: courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Another Crossing reflects an institutional commitment to listening, as well as speaking. The powerful presentation of James-Perry’s Mishoon implies his presence as a cultural guide. Too often museums have assumed their authority to tell the stories of other people, but by inviting artists to create new work and think together about their relationship to history, this exhibition makes space for the strength of the Wampanoag voice in the retelling of the Mayflower myth. Prioritising research and shared learning, it offers a thoughtful model for the ways contemporary art and cultural institutions can confront complicated histories.

Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage is at The Box in Plymouth until 5 June, and is part of Make! Craft! Live!, a series of events to mark the Crafts Council's 50th anniversary

This article first appeared in Crafts magazine

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American, British, Dutch and Wampanoag artists explore the colonisation of America

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