Antinomies of Remembrance is a video installation responding to archival materials related to  the East African slave trade between 1800 and 1900. The piece centers on historical photographs of enslaved Black individuals captured on slave ships departing from Zanzibar the primary hub of the region’s slave trade. Rather than a descriptive or documentary essay, the video functions as a meditation on temporality and absence, and the gaps within historical records.

Through the reappropriation and reimagining of archival imagery, moving away from static representation, the installation opens up a space for speculative thinking. Asking what potentials exist beyond the static, painful reality of the captured image.The narration directly interrogates the complex, contested nature of the archive, positioning us to confront its dual nature. Its  potential to amplify silent voices, but equally its profound limitations, its structural flaws, and place within institutional power. Asking us to consider who speaks for whom, who controls these historical narratives, and how the temporality of reading the past can  shape our understanding of the present.  Antinomies of Remembrance is an ongoing joint project with Jermaine Francis,  Deborah Ireland researcher in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society.