Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, April 10-September 8, 2019
“Joe” (2018) by Em facing “Mesdemoiselles Turnbull, filles de James Turnbull” (1843) by Samuel Palmer. Fugitifs! Salle Devenir, Musée National de Beaux Arts, Québec. Photo by Siobhan Meï.
Situated in striking juxtaposition among portraits of Québec’s “grands notables” in Québec’s Musée National des Beaux Arts is a new set of faces. These are the faces of Andre, Lowcanes, Bett, Jack, Lydia, Bell, Robin, Jane, Nemo, Cash, Joe, Jane, Andre, Ismael, and Jacob: women, children, and men who escaped slavery in Québec during the eighteenth century. In conjunction with the Museum’s recent efforts to address issues of identity and historical (in)visibility, the exposition Fugitifs! is curated by Québecois artist Webster (also known as Aly Ndiaye) and brings together the talents of nine local artists to recreate portraits of formerly enslaved people based on fugitive slave advertisements from the archives of La Gazette de Québec and La Gazette de Montréal. In its revision of histories of settler colonialism and enslavement in Canada, Fugitifs! reveals the importance of clothing as a narrative mode that offers an alternative to traditional sources of historical knowledge such as trading logs, maps, and legal documents largely authored by white propertied men.
Fugitifs! explores the historical, material, and epistemological aspects of fugitivity as a mode of resistance for Indigenous people and people of African descent living in New France (now Québec). In the exhibit, each portrait is displayed alongside its “source text” or the corresponding fugitive slave advertisement. These advertisements were a common way for slaveholders to alert their communities about the escape of an enslaved person and often included details regarding their stature, skin color, gender, age, and clothing as well as a sum for a reward if the person was found. While originally intended to facilitate the re-enslavement of runaway bondspeople, these advertisements have proven a valuable resource to historians, artists, authors, and educators who are invested in imagining “other possibilities” for a colonial past that is in many ways, as Saidiya Hartman suggests, foreclosed by “dominant representations and elite narratives.” [1]
In the case of Canadian national history, the dominant narrative around slavery has been one of silence. Unlike the United States, in which the question of slavery was a major source of civil conflict and rupture for the young nation in the nineteenth century, the dominion of Canada was not founded until 1867, thirty-four years after slavery had been legally abolished by the British Empire. [2] Though not the only reason that histories of slavery have been ignored or marginalized, modern histories of the nation often elide the role that slavery played in the structuring of the economic and social systems of the French and British colonies—stolen Indigenous lands—that now constitute much of the modern country of Canada. [3]
A snapshot from the exhibit Fugitifs! (2019) Featuring art by Paul Bordeleau, D. Mathieu Cassendo, Djief, Em, Maliciouz, Caroline “Gog” Soucy, Richard Vallerand, Valmo, and Amel Zaazaa. Salle Devenir, Musée National de Beaux Arts, Québec. Photo by Siobhan Meï.
During the eighteenth century, the notion of a unified Canadian identity was still a source of conflict, as Upper Canada (primarily British Protestant, now known as Ontario) and Lower Canada (primarily French Catholic, now known as Québec), worked to legislatively protect the dominant cultural, linguistic, and religious identities of their respective provinces. However it is the very distancing of the notion of a Canadian “national identity” from the widespread institution of slavery across these historic borders and cultural divisions that scholars like Frank Mackey address in their work. As historians Marcel Trudel (1960), Daniel Gay (2006), and George Tombs (2013) have described, slavery is a “phenomenon long denied” in Canada despite the fact that “Canadian masters and mistresses exploited over four thousand aboriginal and black slaves between 1632 and 1834.” [4] Given this context of historical erasure, Fugitifs! intervenes in critical conversations taking place in Canada about the archive, national memory, and Afro-Canadian history. The fugitive slave advertisements featured in the exhibit thus point to a past that many generations in Québec have never had to face or acknowledge as part of their national patrimoine. Such advertisements include this one, originally published in the Gazette de Montréal from the 20th of August, 1798:
The advertisement from August 20, 1798 in the Gazette de Montréal reads:
NINE DOLLARS REWARD: Ran away from the Subscriber, on the 12th instant, a Negro Man named Robin or Bob he is about five feet six inches high, had on when he went away, a coarse shirt, and trowsers, a light coloured cloth waistcoat, felt hat, and old shoes, also a Negro Woman named Lydia or Lil, partly of the mulatto colour, about five feet high had on a blue and white striped short gown, a blue druggit petticoat and black silk bonnet, she is thick and well set, they may possibly change their cloathes; they took with them a mulatto child, named Jane about four years old. Any person taking up and securing said Negroes and Child, so that the owner gets them again, shall have the above reward and all reasonable charges paid by, JAMES FRAZER
N.S. All masters of vessels and all others are hereby forbid to harbour, employ, carry off, or conceal, said negroes, as they will be prosecuted in the highest manner, the said James Frazer hath the Protection of Government for said negroes.
Fugitive slave advertisements such as this one serve as archival examples of what historian C. Riley Snorton calls the “transitivity of blackness”—that is, the process by which blackness is constituted as a fungible commodity within the logic of racial capitalism. [5] Snorton and other historians such as Saidiya Hartman, Steeve O. Buckridge, and Marisa J. Fuentes have signaled the importance of reading materiality in the archive— the historical traces of texts, clothes, furniture, textiles, bodies, instruments, and plants— as a way of “confront[ing] and rethinking... the past as it has been rendered into History.” [6] As the portraits included in Fugitifs! reveal, slave advertisements are a critical archival space in which to consider the possibility of material things in the contexts of slavery and freedom. For example, while a fugitive advertisement can be interpreted through the legal framework of ownership (James Frazer publicly reclaiming his “stolen property”), it can also be read in terms of the intimate relationship it describes between the human body and dress.
A close up of the original advertisement that inspired the portrait “Robin, Lydia, and Jane”(2018) by Djief.
In this portrait, artist Djief visually recreates the clothing described in the advertisement to locate Robin, Lydia, and Jane in the historical past and to imagine, along with them, a future beyond enslavement. Jane’s druggit petticoat and Robin’s felt hat are examples of the types of clothes enslaved peoples of the time would’ve worn. Many slave owners would buy coarse textiles, such as druggit, in bulk for distribution among bondspeople who would then create clothing for themselves. These cloths were known as “slave cloth” and they constituted a major industry in eighteenth and nineteenth century North America. Jane’s “white striped short gown” would’ve most likely been made from osnaburg, a plain weave cotton cloth that was sold in solid colors (typically white, brown or blue) or in checked or striped patterns. [7] Though these clothes are intended to serve in the advertisement as markers of their enslavement, a viewer of the portrait of Robin, Lydia, and Jane reads their dressed bodies in the context of their pursuit of freedom. Clothes are thus transitive things in the slavery archive: serving simultaneously as modes of identification for recapture and as critical expressions of identity and self-making. Though fashion’s transitive or ephemeral nature has been linked to its denigration in popular thought as a serious form of human expression, [8] fashion’s transitivity is one of the conditions that makes the re-telling of history possible in exhibits like Fugitifs!
“Robin, Lydia, and Jane” by Djief (2018). Fugitifs! Salle Devenir, Musée National de Beaux Arts, Québec. Photo by Siobhan Meï.
Like Djief, artist Maliciouz foregrounds the intimacies of cloth and storytelling in her portrait of Bett. The fugitive slave advertisement from the Québec Gazette written after Bett’s escape in March of 1787 reads as follows:
RAN-AWAY from the subscribers, between the hours of seven and eight o’clock yesterday evening, a NEGRO WENCH, named Bett, about eighteen years old, middle stature, speaks English, French and German languages well; had on when she went away, a blue Kersey Jacket and Pettycoat, a dark cotton Cap with yellow strings, and an Indian Shawl round her neck, was big with child, and within a few days of her time.
Whoever will apprehend said Negress, and secure her return, shall be paid A REWARD of TWENTY DOLARS, and all reasonable expenses.
Any person who may harbour or conceal the said Negress, will be prosecuted to the rigour of the law, by
JOHNSTON & PURSS
Bett’s layered clothing serves as a reminder of the climate she would’ve been exposed to as a fugitive in Québec in March, where wind, snow, and freezing temperatures made hypothermia a real threat. Maliciouz uses deep colors and textures in Bett’s portrait, drawing the viewer’s eye to the two bright “yellow strings” of her cap. The brightness of the cap strings is picked up in the hues of Bett’s hand, a soft, gold line that rests atop the curve of her belly. Bett’s Indian Shawl is draped over her shoulders, its dark tones blending in with the blues of her petticoats. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Indian-produced cloths were highly valuable; cashmere scarves and shawls in particular were fashionable among the bourgeois classes in Europe and the New World. Indian cloths (called indiennes de traite or guinea cloth) were also common currency in the translatlantic slave trade. After an eighteenth-century shift in global manufacturing from India to European metropoles, imitations of Indian cloths flooded European and New World markets, making these fabrics more accessible to a wider socioeconomic range of people [9].
Bett is one of only a few women depicted in the exposition, and the only pregnant person. As historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar states in her biography of Ona Judge, a woman fugitive who escaped slavery at the hands of President George Washington and Martha Washington, over 90% of escaped slaves were men. As Dunbar explains, many historians suggest this gender disparity is linked to the average age of fugitives from slavery. Most people escaping were between sixteen to thirty-five years of age, a period during which enslaved women were often pregnant, nursing, or raising small children, making planning and executing an escape even more risky and complicated. [10] In her portrait, Bett’s body is shrouded in layers of clothing, however the fabric of her dress parts in the center to reveal her pregnant body. Bett’s arms hug herself and her unborn child and her eyes meet her viewers’ with a steady gaze. Bett stands out, in both the context of the exposition and in the story of her escape, which Maliciouz’s portrait encourages viewers to imagine.
“Bett” (2018) by Maliciouz. Fugitifs! Salle Devenir, Musée National de Beaux Arts, Québec. Photo by Siobhan Meï.
Fugitifs! concluded on September 8, 2019, and toured to the technical college Cégep Limoilu, first at the Québec campus (October 21-31) and then at the Charlesburg campus (November 1-11). Fugitifs! is hopefully not the last exhibit of its kind to be featured at the Musée National des Beaux Arts de Québec. Museum directors and curators have stated that they are committed to fostering a culture of transparency in the presentation of contemporary exhibits and historical works of art. As the museum’s modern art curator, Anne-Marie Bouchard, writes:
Plutôt que de se positionner comme détenteur du savoir sur les oeuvres, le musée devient un lieu de convergence et de partage des savoirs… Notre transparence s’incarne dans la scénographie, dans la multiplication des intervenants partageant leurs savoirs et dans une ouverture à une nécessaire autohistoire des femmes, des Autochtones et de la diversité culturelle.
Rather than positioning itself as the possessor of knowledge about its oeuvres, the museum becomes a space where various kinds of knowledge can converge and be shared… Our transparency is embodied in the scenography, the plurality of contributors sharing their knowledge, and the welcoming of critically necessary self-authored histories from women, Indigenous peoples, and diverse cultural perspectives. [11]
While Bouchard’s comments suggest that the public recognition of the perspectives, experiences, and cultural contributions of Canada’s marginalized communities is now a priority for the Museum, contemporary Canadian artists and writers such as Esmaa Mohamoud, Rodney Saint-Éloi, and Jenny Salgado have been doing this work for some time, specifically by exploring what it means to claim an Afro-Canadian identity. Fugitifs! curator Webster is a hip hop artist and historian who documents Afro-Canadian experiences in multiple ways: through music, children's literature, and even guided city tours of Québec. Webster’s curatorial vision of countering the erasure of Black and Indigenous histories in Canada participates in a transnational “archival turn” in postcolonial and Black studies that focuses on the connections between Black subjectivity and the recorded history of enslavement in the West. As Fugitifs! vibrantly demonstrates, the significance of dress as a historical marker of identity and self-making means that fashion is a particularly powerful site of narrative possibility within the archive.
Notes
[1] For example, the digital humanities project "Freedom on the Move: Re-Discovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People" is a database of fugitive slave advertisements from the United States that demonstrates the value of these archives as records of the lives and stories of those who resisted slavery. In “Freedom on the Move”, the advertisements are interpreted as narratives of freedom, thus challenging histories of slavery in which the actions of enslaved peoples are primarily interpreted through the framework of subjugation. See Hartman, S., Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 10.
[2] The British Empire officially claimed New France after defeating the French Empire in 1759 at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in what is now Québec City.
[3] Mackey, F, Done With Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010).
[4] Tombs, G., “Translator’s Preface” in Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two Centuries of Bondage by Marcel Trudel, translated by George Tombs, (Montréal: Véhicule Press, 2013), p.7. Also see, Gay, D. Les noirs du Québec: 1629-1900, (Québec: Les éditions du Septentrion, 2006).; and Trudel, M. L’esclavage au Canada français, (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1960).
[5] Snorton, C. R., Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
[6] Snorton, p.6. Also see, Buckridge, S. O., The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1750-1890. (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2004); and Fuentes, M. J. Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
[7] Shaw, M. “Slave Cloth and Clothing Slaves: Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Industry,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, (Salem, NC: The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 2013), https://www.mesdajournal.org/2012/slave-cloth-clothing-slaves-craftsmanship-commerce-industry/
[8] Brevik-Zender, H, “Introduction” in Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France, edited by Heidi Brevik-Zender, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018).
[9] Smith, B, “Fast fashion was inspired by Europe’s inability to mimic Indian garb.” Quartz India, (2017), retrieved from: https://qz.com/india/1120113/fast-fashion-was-inspired-by-europes-inability-to-mimic-indian-garb/
[10] Dunbar, E.A., Never Caught: The Washington’s Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. (New York: 37Ink/Atria, 2017), p.102.
[11]Bouchard, A. Croire, Deviner, Ressentir, Imaginer, Revendiquer: 350 ans de practiques artistiques au Québec, edited by Anne-Marie Bouchard and Catherine Morency. (Le Musée National de Beaux Arts de Québec, 2018).
