The Slave Market
All over the world there has been artwork that deals with difficult subjects. Sometimes, when something is considered taboo or it is just too hard to open up lines of dialogue, artwork is used to express these thoughts and feelings. One example of depicting struggle is slavery art, which has been created by many cultures and countries that have had these tragic situations brought upon them. Slavery art comes in many forms, whether it is paintings, sculptures, pottery, or any other kind of art. Here is some of the artwork that has been created in the past by some of these cultures. Hopefully their slavery art helped them to better understand the times and served as a healing agent to them.
1. Bussa Emancipation Statue – This is a sculpture that is displayed publicly in Barbados. The artwork depicts a slave rebellion leader, although a specific person was not intended to be shown. Many residents of Barbados refer to the statue as Bussa because of a slave that helped start a revolution in the island-nation in 1816. The slavery art was sculpted by Karl broodhagen in 1985 to represent freedom and the breaking of chains. The artwork was created nearly 169 years after the revolution occurred, but the slavery art is still a very powerful symbol to not only Barbados residents, but to the entire world.
2. The Slave Market – This is a work of slavery art that was painted in the 19th century. The artwork depicts a Roman slave auction and shows just how disgusting these businesses were. Many people, young and old, male and female, are all lined up waiting to be sold to their new potential owners. Artist Gustave Boulanger painted this slavery art to give viewers the opportunity to feel the fear and shame that the people that were actually sold felt. It is believed that many of the people shown in this artwork were likely intended to be family members that were all forced to become slaves together.
3. The Slave Ship – Another painting that is considered to be slavery art, this shows the cruelty and indifference towards human life that was shown by those that sailed slave ships. The artwork depicts how dying and dead slaves would simply be tossed overboard into the ocean so that the problem was no longer theirs to worry about. This type of slavery art makes you wonder if the people that ran these slave ships felt emotion at all. The artwork was created by J.M.W. Turner and was first publicly displayed in 1840.
All of this artwork can really be touching in many ways. The joys of emancipation and the feelings of hopelessness are captured very well in works of slavery art. Hopefully they will remain available to generations to come so that they may continue to remind us about the pain and torture that our world’s past inhabitants were subjected to.