Creole Portraits series by Jocelyn Gardner
Creole Portraits is a collection of hand-coloured lithographic portraits that reveal intricately braided Afro-centric hairstyles entwined within iron slave collars which were used to punish female slaves accused of inducing abortion. Each portrait also displays one of thirteen ‘exotic’ botanical specimens identified as having been used to induce abortion in the 18th century. Delicately hand-painted with watercolours, as was characteristic of natural history engravings of the period, each portrait is named after one of the botanical specimens using the established Linnaeun binominal system of nomenclature of the period in tandem with each slave’s plantation name; an act which parodies the imperial taxonomical systems.