Think back on your time at school. What did you learn in history class?
As a nation, it’s only recently that many of us are waking up to the fact that for all we learnt about the feats of the British Empire, few pages of our textbooks were dedicated to the people our ancestral conquerors trampled on, murdered or enslaved in order to colonise chunks of the world. Here to teach us more about it is The World Reimagined, an outdoor art installation showing outside the National Maritime Museum.
The World Reimagined is made up of 36 globes designed by different artists, each a piece in the puzzle of the transatlantic slave trade that fuelled Britain’s wealth and prosperity at the time. Some depict scenes of slavery, others offer more hopeful visions of emancipation and a racially just future. As a whole, the aim of the installation is to transform our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and it’s continuing impact on all of us, to ‘explore the world as it is and the world as it could be’. Through this, the team behind it argues, we can hope to make racial justice a reality.
Some of the globes have been designed by artists whose work visitors may have come across before, like British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare and illustrator Vashti Harrison, while other globes were offered to emerging talent to design.
Having toured major cities around the UK in 2022, the public art trail has arrived at the National Maritime Museum, where it remains on display until June 25.
The World Reimagined organisation, which also runs an ‘INSPIRE programme’ to financially support organisations working to achieve racial equality, is run by prominent figures in the Black British community, including Rt Rev Rose Hudson-Wilkin, artistic director of the Young Vic theatre Kwame Kwei-Armah CBE, Baroness Floella Benjamin and former police officer Leroy Logan MBE.
The World Reimagined said: “For too long, the history of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans has been untold, unheard, or mistaught. In the UK, we celebrate with pride the Trade’s abolition – but the people who were enslaved and their descendants; Britain’s role in the Trade’s creation; and the Trade’s devastating legacy are usually missing from how history is told. This is not ‘Black History’, this is all of our history.
“We are living in a key moment for racial justice and it calls on us to courageously face our shared history with honesty, empathy and grace so we can create a new future in which all can say: I am seen.”
The World Reimagined is showing at the National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, London SE10 9NF.
Until June 25, 10am – 5pm.
Admission: FREE.
www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/world-reimagined
