28 | THE VOICE APRIL 2023
Museum
ADVERTORIAL
PHOTOS CREDIT: Yanle Shen
Dancing in Time: Th
International Slavery Museum announces pop-up installation in collaboration with artist LR Vandy.
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L NC N on pril , artist LR Vandy, who is represented by ctober allery in London, will create a new outdoor sculpture, which will see audiences engaging with nternational Slavery Museum from outside of its traditional walls. Launching on 6 April 2023, artist LR Vandy, who is represented by October Gallery in London, will create a new outdoor sculpture, which will see audiences engaging with International Slavery Museum from outside of its traditional walls.
TRANSFORMATION ARTIST: LR Vandy
Providing a platform for multiple voices in developing the overall vision of the Waterfront Transformation Project, this installation, named ‘Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us’ will feed into plans for the overall transformation of the new International Slavery Museum, exploring storytelling, interpretation, and the wider historic waterfront. Continuing in the same spirit as the first and second pop-ups, this intervention, and the placement of the sculpture on the Canning Dock quayside, echoes Vandy’s recent studio relocation to Chatham Historic Dock Yard, working with the Ropery, a 19C building which still makes rope in the traditional way.
Artist LR Vandy comments: “Working with the team of Master Ropemakers has given me a new material to explore and express current themes in my practice. I am not interested in making something inert. I want movement, and movement often implies tensions, and what better material than the rope. What people might not appreciate is how much symbolism the rope holds. Through this sculpture I also want to evoke the feeling of dance – movement. How people throughout times have used dance to break free from oppressive systems.”
HAND MADE
The rope holds both symbolic and historic importance as it was used in ancient construction, the building of Colonisation and Empire through shipping, as well as its more sinister association with slavery and captivity. Vandy uses the materiality of the rope to create abstract female figures out of twists and turns, creating a new sculpture for the International Slavery Museum. The sculpture is hand made by sewing sections of rope and binding the ends with twine. The end form of the rope speaks to the origins of dance in hunting rituals, carnival masquerades and spirit dancers of the African diaspora, reflecting the title of ‘Dancing in Time.’ A source of inspiration for Vandy has been Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, an exploration of dance as a manifestation of the timeless human need for communal joy in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.
HERITAGE
One of the overarching ambitions of the Waterfront Transformation Project is connecting people, outside the International Slavery Museum walls, to the heritage site the museum is surrounded by. Exploring how
