Rivers and Oceans: Navigating Pictorial Legacies of Enslavement in New Orleans and Bristol

Abstract

This two-part article is a comparative analysis of two late twentieth-century works of art: John T. Scott’s Ocean Song (1990), an abstract, large-scale public art sculpture in New Orleans, Louisiana in the U.S., and Sold Down the River (1999), a major, self-portrait-centered painting by the Bristol, UK-based artist Tony Forbes. As outlined in both sections, contemporary artists have produced works that ensure a continuing civic dialogue about, and commemoration of, site-specific histories of enslavement. In examining and placing these two works in their social, political and cultural contexts, the article highlights the role that artists may play in offering pictorial counter-narratives that question “official,” often tourist-driven, narratives that tend to romanticize and/or mollify colonial and/or imperial initiatives, including enslavement and other legacies marked by trauma.