Camille Turner, Maria, 2023, Video and 2-channel sound installation (10:59). Filmed and edited by Jake Levinsky. Commissioned by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid for Otherworld at Art Museum.

Maria (2023)

Maria is a video meditation on the lives torn apart by the Transatlantic trade in Black flesh. “The Maria” was a 50-ton schooner that was built in Newfoundland in 1785 and embarked on a slaving voyage in 1790. Of the 80 prisoners it carried, 76 were children. Canadian Historian Paul Lovejoy affirms that towards the latter part of the Transatlantic trade, children were sought after as their smaller proportions meant that more people could be tightly packed into the holds of ships in order to maximise profits. The video installation Maria shows Black hands representing various generations reaching across time. Young, old, large, and small hands of children, parents, and grandparents emerge from darkness and strain towards each other. They gently touch and lovingly embrace, always grasping, reaching and yearning for each other. Then, they part. The soundtrack employs autobiographical readings from three historical figures who were enslaved as children: Olaudah Equiano. Mary Prince, and the testimony of Sophia Burthen Pooley. 

Olaudah Equiano and his sister were kidnapped from their African homeland as children. Olaudah describes the violence of their capture, their terrifying journey towards the sea, and the devastation of being separated from his sister and his journey across the water on a slave ship. 

Sophia Burthen was similarly stolen as a child along with her sister. They were placed in the dark hold of a ship and taken on a journey from Fishkill, New York into Upper Canada. Sophia was enslaved in various locations in Southern Ontario. Mary Prince, who was born enslaved in 1787 in Bermuda, was sold away from her family at the age of 12. In her autobiography published in 1881, she recounts the unbearable conditions she faced labouring from dawn to dusk in a salt mine in the Caribbean Turks and Caicos. Salt mined through the labour of enslaved people was brought to Newfoundland to support the cod industry.

Performers: Nina Turner, Karen Turner, Lillian Maxwell, Andre Greenidge, Gary Henry, Imanuel Greenidge, Jeremiah Greenidge, Jonathan Greenidge, Destiny-Marie Greenidge, Levi Greenidge

Voices: Dainty Smith, Sheryl Mebane, Sanjo Ogunseye

Cinematographer and Editor: Jake Levinsky

Composer and Sound Engineer: Ravi Naimpally

Production Manager: Roxanne Fernandes