Brought to heal: Sarah Alldred and Penelope Gouk visit the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art

‘The arts can act as a liberator.’

Quakers have a long history of opposing slavery, and were among the founders of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. This was a nonviolent social movement that led to the abolition of slavery across the then British colonies by 1833.

However, as we have learned from Lancaster Meeting and others, Quakers were not consistent in their opposition to slavery. Some took advantage of, and traded in, enslaved people, especially in the colonies, where slavery was more entrenched and profitable. The involvement of Quakers was a contradiction that reflected the social, economic and political realities of the time. Friends’ complex struggles with conscience and faith are difficult to comprehend today.

With the weight of this acknowledgement, at Yearly Meeting 2022 Quakers in Britain resolved to make practical reparations for their involvement in the slave trade. A project called ‘Racial Justice and Equality in Our Society’ was launched to address this legacy. The objective is not only financial compensation, but about acknowledging the harm done, healing the wounds, and transforming the structures that perpetuate racism and inequality.

Even before this national initiative was launched, Central Manchester elders and pastoral care team were encouraging people in our Area Meeting (AM) to support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The death of George Floyd in May 2020 prompted Friends to develop a long-term commitment to becoming an actively anti-racist organisation. This concern led to the creation of an informal BLM group, which organised online book groups and other virtual anti-racist events during lockdown. In April 2022 this initiative morphed into the AM Racial Justice Group (RJG), which, by continuing to direct our Meeting’s attention towards white privilege and its links with other injustices in the world, has generated a shared willingness to educate ourselves about the communities and cultures that continue to suffer from these inequalities.

It was in this spirit of collective exploration and understanding that five members of the RJG (all from Central Manchester) together attended the twelfth edition of Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, entitled uMoya: The sacred return of lost things. As the curator Khanyisile Mbongwa states, uMoya means ‘spirit, breath, air, climate and wind’. The Biennial was about exploring Liverpool’s complex history with the slave trade through this elemental lens, calling up ‘ancestral and indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing’ through over 380 artworks.

The artists who were invited to show their work hailed from all over the world, particularly the global south, and represented indigenous cultures as well as descendants of enslaved people in former colonies. The exhibition offered visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience the wealth of artistic creativity in these often-marginalised communities, and in particular to acknowledge the ongoing legacy of the slave trade.

The weather was fine, so walking between sites was pleasurable – although it was quite a trek from the venues clustered in the city centre to the Tobacco Warehouse, a huge building in Stanley Dock that was designated as ‘Number 1’ on the map that guided us on our tour around the city. The vast warehouse (made from 27,000,000 bricks and standing 125 feet high) originally stored rum and tobacco, and was integral to the violent success of the colonial economy. This site was now given over to artworks that explored themes of repair and healing.

One outstanding installation, the Chorus of Soil by Binta Diaw (pictured), used soil and seeds to map an eighteenth-century plan of a slave ship that originally came from a Quaker tract on slavery.

The sheer scale of this work was breathtaking, being made up of almost-lifesize coffin-like heaps of soil. These represented the bodies inhumanely crammed into the ship’s hold. Importantly, these piles contained seeds, signifying the regenerative potential of soil. Things can grow and flourish even while mourning takes place for the terrible loss of human life on the slave ships.

It is difficult to single out a particular work, but one of the most moving installations for Penny was on the fourth floor of the Tate Liverpool, titled The Echo of an Ancient Form of Knowledge. This work was produced by the Guatemalan artist Edgar Calel, who drew on ancestral knowledge from his Mayan heritage to create a space where stones adorned with fruit and vegetables constitute a sacred site of ritual. It served as an offering to the land and Calel’s ancestors. A text on the wall explained how, for Calel, dreams, art and spirituality are always interconnected. But even before reading it Penny felt a powerful sense of the sacred that was similar to her experience of Quaker worship.

Likewise, for Sarah, these works were incredibly profound in their simplicity. The one artwork that stood out for her was by Sandra Suubi at the Open Eye Gallery. It was called Samba Gown, and made from discarded plastic from Uganda’s rivers, an after-effect of colonialism. The work re-enacts the Ugandan Independence ceremony of 1962 as a wedding ceremony, when Uganda (the bride) entered into a binding contract with its former colonisers (the groom). Sarah was amazed at how beautiful, powerful and defiant all of these discarded items were once pulled together into a dress.

One of the key messages that came out of the visit was that, while the task of reparation and healing is a difficult but necessary act for communities to move forward, the arts can act as a liberator in making the process more bearable. On a more personal level, each of us valued the bond of travelling together as a shared community of Friends, to experience the Biennial while bringing our own histories, expectations and needs, and expressing these openly over the various food and drink stops we had throughout the day.

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