Collaborative installation with Ashby Carlisle
Window Installation at Marquee Gallery, New London, Connecticut
Copper wire words, velvet, steel frame
They Came by Water: Research
The words in this installation are based on information found in “Ethnic Survey of New London, Connecticut, 1938-44: A resurvey after some twenty years.” by Bessie Bloom Wessel from Connecticut College published in Journal of Sociology, September 1944. (original research published in 1920) Wessel’s ethnic groups from largest to smallest include: Italian, British, German, Irish, Polish, Colored, French, Albanian, Armenian, Belgium, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Filipino, Portuguese, Russian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Swiss, and Syrian. Non-whites were put in one category called “colored” which included native people as well as Africans. The native people’s language, Pequot, is an oral language. We used resources at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and the online Mohegan Language Project to identify transliterated words for the installation. We also know from the Amistad records, that there were Mende people here from Sierra Leone. This language was an oral tradition until the early 1920s. Thus, we have no written words in Mende to represent that population living in New London.
The audio recording is Pequot words spoken by Clifford Sebastian and Dangbe words spoken by Thomas Dabra from Ghana.
This project was supported by the Connecticut Sea Grant, The University of Connecticut, Avery Point, Connecticut
https://seagrant.uconn.edu/funding/grants/ctsg-art-award-recipients/
Resources:
We Came By Water, Sculpture Grounds
Jason Mancini - https://indianmarinersproject.com/
Mohegan Dictionary - https://www.mohegan.nsn.us/about/information/restoration-project (Currently under reconstruction)
Mohegan Pequot Language - https://moheganlanguage.net/ and http://www.native-languages.org/mohegan.htm
https://www.jstor.org/ - Journal of Sociology, September, 1944.