"A Case For Colonialism" ?
2017
Archival document, gel, stamps,
conté crayon, acrylic on mixed-media paper.
30x45cm
This mixed media piece responds to the inflammatory article titled “The Case for Colonialism” by Bruce Gilley, originally published in the Third World Quarterly in 2017. Due to its lack of rigorous scientific method and historical evidence, the article has been removed from the publication. I use an original 1979 letter from the former King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, who wrote to the US President Jimmy Carter asking for military intervention to prevent the spread of the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime in Cambodia. Surrounding the letter are colonial stamps bearing the iconic representation of Indochina and the French Third Republic– the Angkorian temples, the image of Marianne, and the face of Indochinese “natives.” On the letter itself, the image of a bleeding fleur-de-lys, the national flower of France, obscured the content of the writing underneath. The piece as a whole gestures at the lasting legacy of colonial violence and refutes the argument for colonization in all forms – physical, epistemological, even mental.
