Home/Land - Excavation : A site of Memory : Sylvia D.Hamilton

"SYLVIA D. HAMILTON Excavation: A Site of Memory In this installation that incorporates text, images (both still and moving), sound and found objects, Hamilton uses a personal and collective lens to frame her interrogation of the complex, linked concepts of memory, place and history in the African Nova Scotian community. Excavation visualizes the tangible markings of the enslavement of African people in Nova Scotia, through archival newspaper ads juxtaposed with photographic images, imagined poetic narratives, and everyday physical material such as potatoes, ribbons and barrels. Parallel sections, Waters of the Diaspora and The Passage, combine text and visual images to evoke the symbolic role of water in the lives of African peoples. Hamilton underscores her role in the community as filmmaker and cultural note-taker. As a storyteller, she embraces the concept articulated by French historian Pierre Nora in which the installation itself becomes a temporal ‘site of memory’ where the real and the imagined co-exist." -- Publisher's website.