Cadboro Bay: Index to an Incomplete History

Artist/Creator: Melinda Mollineaux (Artist)
Date: 1998/2021
ID #: BG6042

Physical Description

Medium: gelatin silver print, vinyl
Support: paper
Dimensions: –
Object Description: This work is made of 8 photographs depicting the shoreline and foliage of Cadboro Bay in Victoria, BC, where Black settlers from San Francisco landed after fleeing the fugitive slave law of 1850. The Bay is also the ancestral land of the Lekwungen Checkonien people, as was known as Sungayka prior to the migrants' arrival. The wall vinyl is about Emancipation Day picnics held there every August 1.

Mollineaux's pinhole photography demands the photographer's extended presence; although bodies remain invisible in this work, the images map Mollineaux’s own presence in Cadboro Bay and thus Canadian Black history onto its landscape. Cadboro Bay examines the absence and erasure of Black bodies in the making of BC and Canada's colonial narrative.

8 framed gelatin silver prints
31 x 38.5 x 3.2 cm (BG6042)
31 x 38.5 x 3.2 cm (BG6043)
53.5 x 43.5 x 3.2 cm (BG6044)
53.5 x 43.5 x 3.2 cm (BG6045)
106.5 x 81.5 x 5.5 cm (BG6046)
96.5 x 127 x 5.5 cm (BG6047)
96.5 x 127 x 5.5 cm (BG6048)
Wall vinyl dimensions are variable (BG6049)

Wall vinyl text:

John Craven Jones predicted rain ∙ J.J. Moore spoke in tongues ∙ Elizabeth Leonard realized her betrayal ∙ Rebecca Gibbs tended fires ∙ Sarah Jane Douglas Moses knew she would leave ∙ Willis Bond gave libations ∙ Samuel Booth wanted more ∙ Emma Stark laughed to tears ∙ Samuel Ramsay, who usually worked feverishly, fell asleep ∙ Priscilla Stewart gathered shells for no reason ∙ Nancy Alexander tended to children ∙ Samuel Ringo listened to birdsongs ∙ Nathan Pointer resurrected himself ∙ Fortune Richard scanned the horizon ∙ Sarah Lester dreamed in music ∙ Mifflin Wistar Gibbs’ bones ached ∙ Mary Lowe Barnswell knew ecstasy ∙ Stephen Whitley folded the surface ∙ Cornelius Charity discerned a truth ∙
Sungayka

History

Collection: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Permanent Collection
Credit Line: Purchased with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2021
Related Exhibitions: Start Somewhere Else: Works from the Collection

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Descriptions are works in progress and may be updated as new descriptive practices, research and information emerge. To help improve this record, please contact us.