EMPIRE LINES

Design Museum curator Rachel Hajek makes sense of Ai Weiwei’s ‘fields’ of found objects, from ancient Chinese porcelain to Lego bricks, and how the contemporary artist’s fascination with the history of making is itself making history. One of the world’s most well-known living artists and activists, Ai Weiwei works across disciplines, from film and sculpture, to collection, curation, and archealogi...

Professors Miriam Leonard and Daniel Orrells, curators at the Freud Museum London, dig into the Austrian’s collection of ancient objects, and how archaeology shaped his approach to psychoanalysis in the 20th century. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) simultaneously pioneered both psychoanalysis and global antiquity.  Fascinated by classical cultures, he collected objects across space and time, from A...

Could the state of state-lessness mean a more continental, inclusive sense of belonging? The contemporary Southeast and East Asian artists of the collective Kakilang certainly think so. Challenging their conflation as ‘Chinese’, their joint exhibition in London spans the historical migration routes of Vietnamese refugees, to audio maps of Taiwan, and post-Tsunami Japan - regions rarely considered...

Rijksmuseum curator Valika Smeulders polishes and personalises our understanding of the Dutch Golden Age, from their joint exhibition with the UN, Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery. When Slavery opened at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2021, it was one of the first exhibitions of its kind. Spanning 250 years from the 17th to the 19th century, it told Dutch colonial history as a...

Japan House London curator Hashimoto Mari and translator Eyre Kurasawa unravel kumihimo , the ancient craft of Japanese silk braiding, and how its contemporary reconstructions connect Edo-era samurai armour with French military fashions from the 19th century. Literally translated as ‘joining threads together’, kumihimo is the intricate Japanese practice of cord braiding. Its strong and flexible ‘s...

Curator Barnaby Wright transports us from the Courtauld Gallery in London, to the Caribbean island of Trinidad, as seen - and heard - by Peter Doig, one of Europe’s most highly valued contemporary painters. Peter Doig’s vast figurative paintings pay homage to the many places where he has lived and practiced - though never really called home. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, his career has been character...

We're back offline, and inside Banned., a new exhibition blending archive and present-day photography at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Curator Sabina Desir joins Anita, Mark, and Julie - three children of Black and Indigenous American airmen stationed at RAF Manston in the 1950s - to imprint their portraits of racial identity and ambiguity in Britain. Between 1951 and 1958, 2500 US Air Force...

EMPIRE LINES uncovers the unexpected, often two-way, flows of empires through art. Interdisciplinary thinkers use individual artworks as artefacts of imperial exchange, revealing the how and why of the monolith ‘empire’. Now, EMPIRE LINES is moving offline for good - with even more exclusive interviews recorded on location with the world's leading curators, historians, and artists, bringing museum...

Dr. Sarah Longair unseats European powers' efforts to control the East African coast, through a Kiti Cha Enzi, or Swahili Chair of Power, produced in the 19th century. Intricately decorated with an ivory inlay, a large, wooden throne sits proudly - not in its place of production of Witu, Kenya, but the stores of the British Museum. Kiti cha enzi, or seats of power, were used as thrones by Swahili...

Dr. Chris Spring tears up stereotypes of African textiles, through Araminta de Clermont's 2010 photograph, Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx. Three young men wait at a bus stop near Cape Town in South Africa, clad in blankets of brilliant blue and rose red. Historically, these 'African' woven textiles were originally manufactured by Europeans during the colonial period. Dutch imperial traders, who first e...

We're back offline, and in the artist's bedroom at Van Gogh House in London, as Vaishnavi Mohan pins down Harold Offeh's sound installation, We Came Here, an imagined conversation on migration between Vincent Van Gogh and the Jamaican-born, Brixton-based community leader, Olive Morris. In 1873, the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh arrived in Stockwell in South London. Almost a century later, Olive M...

Deborah Lee-Talbot exposes the political agency of Indigenous women in British New Guinea, through a photograph of the Papuan Geua, taken in the 1880s. In her European 'Mother Hubbard' dress, and necklace made of local shells, Geua's status as a powerful, 'Big Woman' of Papua New Guinea is without question. A politically motivated Indigenous intermediary, she collaborated with the British missiona...

Dr. Helen Paul bursts the South Sea Bubble, tracing the triangular trade of slavery between London and Britain's colonies in South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, via John Cleveley's 18th century painting, The Luxborough Galley on Fire. Sailing into the dark green waters of the mid-Atlantic Ocean, the Luxborough Galley is in imperilled. Consumed by flames, with no land in sight, its white passeng...

James Marriott traces the flows of Britain's global oil empire in the 20th century, from a village in Nigeria to The Beatles' 1965 vinyl, Drive My Car. Penned by Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1965, ‘Drive my Car’ transported The Beatles on their way to international success. It is the soundtrack of the British empire of the 1960s, characterised by pop culture domination and high-powered men in...

We're back offline, and into the deep black exhibition space of Bath's Holburne Museum, where artist Nalini Malani coats fresh layers upon classical paintings from the National Gallery in her new installation, My Reality is Different. Artist Nalini Malani disrupts Western linear perspectives – in art, and in history. In My Reality is Different , the viewer is engulfed within a dark cavern,...

Dr. Michele Lamprakos reconstructs the imperial flows of Islamic and Byzantine architecture from 8th century Spain, through the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, or the Mezquita. A strange, hybrid building dominates the southern Spanish city of Córdoba. Part mosque, part cathedral, the Mezquita was first constructed by the early Islamic Umayyad dynasty - then seized, 'purified,' and consecrated as a Ch...

Dr. Peter Good traces the flows of Persian wine culture through precolonial India into Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, via the Queen Anne Wine Bottle from Shiraz. No other alcoholic drink has inspired - or intoxicated - our imaginations quite like wine. Long considered the perfect gift from visitors, this striking sapphire blue bottle from Shiraz was presented to the English Queen Anne in 1...

We're celebrating fifty episodes of EMPIRE LINES, with three specials recorded offline and in the museum space – this time in the Turner Contemporary in Margate, for their latest exhibition Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning. Artist Ingrid Pollard explores her career of photographing Black experiences, beyond the city and urban environment, to the English countryside. Since the 1980s, artist In...

We're celebrating fifty episodes of EMPIRE LINES, with three specials recorded offline and in the museum space – this time in the William Morris Gallery, in London, for their latest exhibition Althea McNish: Colour is Mine. Co-curator Rose Sinclair unwrap McNish's bold textile designs, and Caribbean and British colonial connections, through her infamous Batchelor Girl's room installation Althea Mc...

We're celebrating fifty episodes of EMPIRE LINES, with three specials recorded offline and in the museum space – this time in the Tate Modern, in London, for their latest exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders. Returning to EMPIRE LINES, Richard Gray joins curator Carine Harmand to explore the works of Mozambican artist, Malangatana Ngwenya. Plus, curator Keith Shiri unveils Malangatana's restored m...

Dr. Sonal Khullar sounds out how the Long Partition shapes Indian and Pakistani identities, through Bani Abidi's 2016 audio installation, Memorial to Lost Words. Memorial to Lost Words has been seen and heard across Edinburgh, Berlin, Sharjah, and Chicago. But its installation at Lahore Museum in Pakistan, as part of the city’s inaugural Lahore Biennale in 2018, marked a kind of homecoming. Bani A...

Dr. Nalini Iyer rereads South Indian and diasporic experiences of Partition, through Balachandra Rajan's 1958 novel, The Dark Dancer. Born in British India but educated at Cambridge University, V. S. Krishnan finally returns to his home country on the eve of its independence in 1947. But after many years cut off from his family and culture, this South Indian civil servant has become a typical colo...

Dr. Piotr Puchalski depicts interwar Poland's imperial aspirations, through the Maritime and Colonial League's 1938 poster, Colonial Days: We Demand Colonies For Poland. Facing economic crises and the onset of World War II, Poland looked to Africa as a source of material wealth, potential place of alternative appeasement, and site of refuge for its Jewish population. With their abundance of 'exoti...

Hooda Shawa rewrites the fairytales in England's 18th century country houses, exposing the Indian and Palestinian foundations of Derbyshire's Kedleston Hall. Nestled amidst acres of rolling hills, Derbyshire's Kedleston Hall boasts artistic masterpieces, Peacock dresses, and even an 'Eastern Museum' - all furnished from a fairytale. But this neo-classical mansion has a darker past, as the ancestra...

Dr. Stephanie Porras carves out the Chinese connection between Spain's colonies in Mexico City and Manila in the Philippines, in a 17th century ivory statue of St. Michael the Archangel. With gently curving wings, the figure of St. Michael the Archangel has stood watch over Mexico City, the former Spanish colony of New Spain, since the 17th century. But this particular statue was actually produced...