Soerdie was the first female indentured labourer to be shipped from India via Barbados to Suriname. The third Atlantic Window shows how artist and researcher Sarojini Lewis takes on the role of Soerdie. The exhibition is on show from 31 March.
On 1 July 1863, The Netherlands abolished slavery on paper in Suriname. In practice, the newly freed people of Suriname are forced to continue working on the plantations for another ten years. To meet the labor shortage after this period, The Netherlands begins recruiting so-called indentured labourers. These people are often recruited with false promises in places like China, India and Indonesia. Sometimes they leave their country of their own accord, sometimes they are forced or kidnapped. They are barely paid and work in horrific conditions on the plantations. Few had the opportunity to return. Many remained in Suriname and never saw their homeland again.
Artist and researcher Sarojini Lewis came across the person Soerdie in the archives of the Royal Library in The Hague: the first female indentured labourer to be shipped from India via Barbados to Suriname. Using books, letters and travel accounts from the time, Lewis imagines what Soerdie's life might have been like.
Sarojini Lewis takes on the role of Soerdie in her photography. Her self-portraits at historical locations respond to the energy present on the abandoned plantations in Suriname and archival material she discovered earlier. In doing so, she uses Critical Fabulation: a creative reconstruction of Soerdie's life, based on the few surviving records from archives. She connects the story of this woman with the history of her own Indian ancestors who worked in the same area in Commewijne. In the exhibition Sarojini Lewis herself is speaking.
Sarojini Lewis, self portrait
In a series of Atlantic Windows, contemporary artists reflect on the exhibition Shadows on the Atlantic and the impact of its colonial past. Earlier Windows are created by Kevin Osepa and Sites of Memory.
Atlantic Window III: Sarojini Lewis - Silence of the Sea: A Trace of Soerdie is on show from 31 March until 1 October. The opening will be on Sunday 30 March, learn more here.
Biography
Sarojini Lewis (1984, India/Sur/Netherlands) has a background in Fine Art with a specialisation in archival photography, video art and book arts. She currently works as a curator, researcher and artist. Her PhD in visual studies examined the indentured labour archive through a contemporary lens.
Her projects reveal a preoccupation with history: of the landscape, the city, the environment and its user. She questions what unites men in particular their cultural diversity,
what kinds of views are present.
Lewis participated in several projects for the Rijksmuseum and Wereldmuseum in The Netherlands and worked on multiple international projevtd. She had several international exhibitions in New Delhi, Brazil and Rotterdam.