EMPIRE LINES

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...

Dr. Jared Hardesty picks up the party debris littered by New England's illegal imperialists, via John Greenwood's 1750s painting, Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery reign in a private club in Paramaribo, then the Dutch colony of Surinam. John Greenwood's 18th century scene boasts of the illegal behaviour of ship captains and merchants from Britain’s New England c...

Dr. Caitlin Harvey maps out land transfers from Indigenous communities to European education institutions, through an 1873 Map of New Zealand’s 'Colonial' University. Depicting the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, a vast map outlines the lands around the Kimihia and Hakanoa Lakes and Waikato River. It's largest feature, thousands of acres in size, is labelled 'Endowment for Colonial Universit...

Dr. Saygin Salgirli mines the hidden link between four early modern empires, in a 17th century Painting of Silver Labourers in Potosí, Bolivia. In a peaceful mountain landscape, three labourers in colourful turbans and tunics mine silver together in a metric, obedient rhythm. Likely painted for the first non-European text on the Americas, this idyllic depiction of labour has a more complicated pas...

Aisha Hussain plays out tropes of Ottoman Turks in English Orientalist theatre, in two 17th century productions of The Tragedy of Mustapha. In 1553, the Ottoman Sultan Soleyman ordered the murder of his eldest son and heir to the throne, Prince Mustapha. Stranger than fiction, his story speaks to the crises of succession, sibling rivalries, and infanticide that marred the imperial Ottoman Court. T...

For EMPIRE LINES’ 40th episode, Professor Craig Clunas dials in from London’s Freud Museum to discuss their latest exhibition, Freud and China, shrinking the international networks of psychoanalysis. Smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Austria before World War II, Sigmund Freud's Chinese jade screen was amongst his most prized antiquities. Much like his chow dogs and cherry blossom trees, these mode...

Anna Ghadar turns back against colonial archives of Native American peoples, via Fred Wilson's 1992 exhibition at the Maryland Historical Society, Mining the Museum. Amidst precisely whittled arrowheads, and expertly crafted tools, five Cigar Store Indians in feathered bonnets stand dressed for battle. But beyond confrontation, they turn away from their viewers, engaging in conversation with portr...

Dr. Jeanne Morgan Zarucchi fires up legacies of British colonialism in contemporary American consumption, through Johnson Brothers' Old Britain Castles Ceramic Plate, produced from 1930. Manufactured for export to America, Old Britain Castles promised to connect consumers with their 18th century colonial origins. Produced by the British firm Johnson Brothers from 1930, designers used engravings of...

Dr. Tim Murray smashes imperial stereotypes of Asia through tastes and trades, in a 19th century Standard Willow Ceramic Plate from Josiah Spode's Staffordshire pottery. Adorning dinner tables across the world, Josiah Spode's Chinese-inspired ‘Standard Willow’ rapidly became the world's most popular ceramic pattern. Produced in Staffordshire from 1790, its blue-and-white pines and pagodas speak to...

A. A. Bastian navigates the commercial and Christian aspirations of Euro-American trading empires in 19th century Asia, through a Water Splotch from the Bay of Bengal in Levi Savage's ship diary. Hugging India's glistening Bay of Bengal, Euro-American ships like the Monsoon and Fire Queen carried goods and peoples to and from Calcutta, the meeting point of the British and Mughal empires. An emblem...

Dr. Mona Narain reimagines Britain through the eyes of the colonial Indian subject, via Elizabeth Hamilton's 1796 novel, Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. Following the adventures of the fictional Indian Rajah Zāārmilla in London, Elizabeth Hamilton's Letters upends stereotypical narratives of the imagined east. Staged in a series of letters, her novel refocusses 18th century Britain t...

Dr. Desmond Manderson lashes new layers atop Australia's colonial founding myths, through Gordon Bennett's 1991 painting, Possession Island. When Captain Cook planted the Union Jack on Possession Island in 1770, Australia was entirely subsumed within the British Empire. Colonial imaginings of this moment reinforced the legal myth around terra nullius, still propagated in constitutional classes tod...

Jeremy Eccles etches out the colonial and continued denial of discrimination against Australia's Indigenous communities, through Judy Watson's 2005 series, a preponderance of aboriginal blood. Sixteen black and white documents from the Queensland State Archives, dating back to 1866, map out Australia's discriminatory race-based system of citizenship rights. Now splattered with blood red ink by the...

Dr. Lily Filson reroutes religious loot through the 6th and 8th centuries, via the Teak Column of al-Qalis, produced in Yemen, and plundered for Saudi Arabia. A tall wooden column towers over pilgrims to the heart of the Islamic faith in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Installed around the 8th century as Islamic pious plunder, it is one the last surviving remnants of the Christian church al-Qalis, erected in...

Dr. Tessa Murphy retouches European renderings of colonial Caribbean commerce in the 18th century, through Agostino Brunias' oil painting, Linen Market, Dominica. Painted around 1780, Linen Market, Dominica depicts a Caribbean port town teeming with commerce. Great ships and local Kalinago canoes straddle the coastline, as people of all races and classes and barter for carrots, calabashes, and cal...

For EMPIRE LINES’ 30th episode, we’re heading offline and out into the museum space - to SOAS’ Brunei Gallery, in London. Richard Gray is co-curator of their latest exhibition, Our Sophisticated Weapon: Posters of the Mozambican Revolution. Cashew nuts are a paradoxical symbol in Mozambique. Brought over from Brazil by 16th century Portuguese colonists, they were used to attract - and commit - Moz...

Dr. David Damrosch intertwines imperial expectations in 18th century Europe with Middle Eastern realities, in Antoine Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuit, or The Thousand and One Nights. Filled with flying carpets and trapped genies, the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Scheherazade might seem little more than bedtime stories. But the tales of The Thousand and One Nights iwere born out of the real expe...

Dr. Dorothy Armstrong untangles British efforts to redefine colonial Indian culture, through a 19th century knotted pile carpet woven in Lahore Central Jail. Produced with the low-cost labour of Indian prisoners, jail carpets were big business in the British Empire. Beyond physical coercion, imperial authorities also trapped India in their vision of 'authentic' oriental aesthetics, privileging Per...

Jessica Albrecht busts the founding myths of 19th century Buddhist revivalism, through a Statue of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott at Fort Railway Station in Sri Lanka, the former British colony of Ceylon. Known as the 'White Buddhist', US Colonel Henry Steel Olcott is celebrated for sparking Sri Lanka's Buddhist revival movement in 1880s. Golden statues scatter across the island in tribute to the co-f...