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Bauxite Blues
Artist Jamilah Sabur (1987)
Title Bauxite Blues
Year 2022
Material C-Type print on dibond sheets with aluminium frame; neon text
About the work The picture shows two hands with protective gloves working with chips. Below this, in neon letters, is bauxite blues. Bauxite is the raw material for the aluminium used to make chips. Blues has a double meaning: it is the musical style that evolved from the songs of enslaved people and it stands for an indefinable, melancholy feeling. The neon letters ‘bauxite blues’ refer to the environmental damage and soil impoverishment caused by bauxite mining. Companies from former colonial countries often reap the profits in this industry. Thus, the colonial past continues to make itself felt in today’s economy.
About the artist Sabur’s work usually begins with research into a place. This may be a bauxite mine in her native Jamaica, or a former sugar plantation in New Orleans where parts for spacecraft are now produced. During her research, Sabur focuses on the connection between social, political, geological, ecological and historical factors. She then poetically depicts this connection in installations, films, photographs or performances. She studied Fine Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the University of California at San Diego. She lives and works in Miami, in the United States.
In the collection Acquired in 2022. This is the only work by Sabur in the collection. De Nederlandsche Bank has works by more artists who reflect on the influence of the colonial past on the present. One example is Gilleam Trapenberg. Read more about his photographs Kant'i Laman No 3 (Aan het water No 3) andn Westpunt.
