"TREASURED CIGAR BOX designed by April Martin Chartrand, 2012. San Francisco Public Library solo exhibition. San Francisco Public Library (Main)
June 23-August 2nd, 2012 3rd Floor African American Wing.
Chartrand's Treasured Cigar Box series invites you into a world of the global slave trade perspectives between Africa, Europe, the Americas, and America (USA). These multidimensional assemblage cigar boxes incorporate recycled and found objects, keys, money, and hand painted paper.
This series bridges a historical gap by connecting the major Colonial slave trade shareholders and their cultivation of tobacco products in the New World. The larger European Crowns (a constitution Monarchy) which expanded their empires were: Portugal, Spain, France, Britain/England, Dutch/Netherlands, and America. Theses countries established global trading companies, built fortified harbors and trading settlements along the coastlines of the African continent (Gore, St. Louise, Elmira, and Cape Coast . . .). For example, the French East Indian Company was one of the first such Gold Coast corporations. All of these counties traded in various commodities, and parceled out newly colonized territories throughout the Triangular Trade system (West Africa, Caribbean, Americas, and Europe).
The Treasured Cigar Box series offers knowledge and research into the deeper meaning of how their exploitative practices in the brutal servitude of the African slaves reaped fortunes for the Colonizers. Finally, the planting and harvesting of tobacco by African Slaves fueled the beginnings of the modern day global corporations.
