Art at the Archive

Reimagining Unforgotten Lives

Our Work

Annie-Marie Akussah

Find out about Annie's work

Biography and interview with Annie-Marie Akussah, an Art at the Archive artist at The London Archives

Our Work

Elyssa Rider

Find out about Elyssa's work

Biography and interview with Elyssa Rider, an Art at the Archive artist at The London Archives

Our Work

Tara Jerome-Bernabé

Find out about Tara's work

Biography and interview with Tara Jerome-Bernabé, an Art at the Archive artist at The London Archives

Our Work

About the Art at the Archive project

Reimagining 'Unforgotten Lives'

Find out more about the Art at the Archive project that brought together artists to produce artwork inspired by the 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition in 2023.

Art at the Archive

Art Exhibition

Art at the Archive was a creative project to bring to life archival records of people of colour from London's past with commissioned art works, inspired by our 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition previously held at The London Archives in 2023. It featured five new works by diverse artists Annie-Marie Akussah, Elyssa Rider, and Tara Jerome-Bernabé. The artwork was on display and is now archived as part of the permanent collection at The London Archives.

The Artwork

Annie-Marie Akussah created 'Confronting the unknown, the new land', a three-dimensional wall hanging, and 'What gets lost in translation, deep deep deep in the belly of...' a series of books, that used archival maps and images of landscapes that Black abolitionist Ottobah Cuguoano would have encountered to explore the uprooting of people and manufacturing of resources on both historical sites.

Elyssa Rider produced two oil paintings including 'Interpretation of Ann Duck' , a portrait of a young Black mixed race woman whose face has been forgotten but her criminal past preserved in the court records of the Old Bailey, and 'Interpretation of a Japanese Merchant' an imagined Japanese woman in London in the 1500s, to re-address the absence of East-Asian women in the archive.

Tara Jerome-Bernabé reimagined the lives and images of young black servants who were enslaved and made to work in aristocratic families as ‘houseboys’ in their painting 'Fafanto's Children'. Their new woven painting hopes to start a peaceful and more natural connection to the individuals trapped in certain derogatory paintings of the sixteenth to eighteenth century.

Quotations

Read what the artist's and others said about the project.

In the same way that the team behind ‘Unforgotten Lives’ are to be congratulated for curating such a superb exhibition, Annie-Marie, Tara, and Elyssa deserve our gratitude for using their considerable skills to interpret these people’s lives and introduce us to them – many of us for the first time.
Munsur Ali, Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Culture, Heritage, and Libraries Committee

I hope that people will feel that my work illuminates the sentiment behind the 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition and the importance of bringing these individuals to light so that we can continue to create better foundations of our historical understandings of that time.
Tara Jerome-Bernabé, artist

While appreciating the beauty in their art works, we would do well to remember the ugliness of racism, the despicable trade in human beings, and the extreme hardship that the people featured in these pieces, and many others before and after them, had to endure.
Munsur Ali, Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Culture, Heritage, and Libraries Committee

The Inspiration

Unforgotten Lives exhibition

Art at the Archive brought together three artists to produce artworks which respond to, reflect on, or was inspired by our 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition. This unveiled the stories of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous heritage who lived and worked in the city between 1560 and 1860; their experiences etched into the very fabric of London’s archives. This stemmed from the 'Switching the lens project'.

Our exhibition was a tapestry of these lives - weaving together vibrant threads of love, family, ambition, and resilience, juxtaposed with the stark realities of discrimination and injustice.

The Power of Art in Archival Spaces – Why Art at the Archive?

Archives typically lack the voices of everyday individuals; instead, they primarily focus on discussing people in a formal, institutionalised manner. Art, on the other hand, provides a means to respond and imbue the official narratives with the previously unheard voices of the marginalised. Archival documents can look visually dull and be difficult to engage with. Art offers an opportunity to humanise these sources, put a face to the record and bring to life the stories of people of colour across time. Art can also provide an opportunity to critically and creatively fill archival gaps and silences and offer new ways to counter harmful historical misrepresentations.

Through the transformative power of art, the artists reimagined the history of African, Caribbean, and Asian heritage in London, shedding light on untold stories and forgotten voices.

Legacy

As a legacy of the Art at the Archive project, the artwork and related material is preserved in our permanent collections at The London Archives - to symbolically write this story into our history books, and recognise the power in preserving and honouring our collective history.

The artwork is available to borrow as part of our loans process, to continue to make it accessible to a large and diverse audience, both nationally and internationally.