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well, i'll put on my historian garb here and say that if i were in your place, serlindsipity, i would be working the other way around, from the pieces outward rather than from the entire history of colonialism inward toward the pieces.
but i'm still not sure i understand what you're up to: are you curating a show or is it to be your work? the idea as you outline it sounds like it'd be an interesting curatorial matter, but as the focus for a collection of your stuff i would think it could get you into problematic areas. this because the space that separates a gesture that you might want to make as an artist and the effect of a show--which is a social thing the meanings for which get assigned it by others many of whom will not share the context that you bring to bear on the production of your stuff. so you obviously need to know not only about the historical situations you want to address, but also about the history of shows like the one you are considering in order to see which gestures are worn out, which might work, which get construed in counter-productive ways, which might work to generate the kind of responses that you might want.
it doesnt seem to me that a giant mea culpa is going to work terribly well. thinking about it, i can imagine you running into alot of static over it.
so i am kind of hoping that this is a curatorial gig of some kind. it'd be much easier to pull off this kind of show if your voice operated at the level of organization and commentary rather than through the work being exhibited
if its your work, then i would imagine that an installation would operate better than more traditional work---but even there, you have questions about what limits are imposed on you by virtue of presenting this type of information, this type of problem, in a gallery context. whether you end up, despite your intentions (as best i can figure them out), in aestheticizing the violence you want to condemn.
there are alot of problems that attend heading down this corridor.
i'm certainly not saying dont do it--quite the contrary--do it but be fore-armed against obvious problems that you can encounter as a function of (a) the gallery setting itself (b) the context that is created for you by other, parallel types of shows and their fates (c) the historical situations that you are trying to address and (d) problems that attend your subject position as the person who is doing the addressing.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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