‘It’s the debt that you owe’ is an exhibition that will take over Peckham Levels, featuring visual and performance work by 12 artists investigating how the legacy of colonialism has led to the debt crisis of today.
The exhibition is curated by Debt Justice, a campaigning charity, and presents work that explores the impact of debt on countries in the global south, including through the artists’ own lived experience. The work investigates the colonial capitalist underpinnings of debt and resistance to neo-colonial oppression.
Skye Golding, Organiser at Debt Justice said:
“Unjust debt is keeping countries in poverty and channelling their resources to rich countries and multinational companies. Debt is too often seen as a neutral technical issue, and its direct relationship to colonial injustice is forgotten. We are excited to work with artists who are bringing the connections between debt and colonial exploitation to life based on their personal connections to countries in debt.”
Schools and community groups are encouraged to visit the exhibition. There will be a Debt Justice staff member on site during opening hours who can share more about the exhibition and the issues of debt justice, climate justice, colonial legacies, reparations and resistance.
The global South debt crisis is a crisis of race and class injustice, which has been hidden behind ahistorical narratives of debt as an apolitical technical issue, or the fault of global South governments. Unsustainable debt in the global South is a legacy of colonialism, and a neo-colonial tool used by rich nations to extract and exploit from the global south, thus maintaining racialised colonial power dynamics. Addressing global South debt is therefore a critical part of global politics working to create non-exploitative and egalitarian societies.
Debt justice is inseparable from racial and climate justice, as the countries that are in debt crisis are the same as those that were exploited by extractive colonialism, left with weak and unbalanced economies on independence, and are now facing the astronomical costs of the climate crisis, caused by the fossil fuel emissions of the former colonial powers. The costs in adapting to the climate crisis and reconstructing after climate disasters keep global south countries stuck in a climate-debt trap, without the resources to invest in adapting to future climate disasters, or developing the education, healthcare and infrastructure that would allow them to escape from their dependent position in the international system.
Peckham Levels from 9 – 17 November 2023. Admission free.
