Turntables

This series references the ways in which music has acted as a salve to enslavement and suffering during and after the colonial era. Urging the viewer to listen to ancestral voices, Thomas-Girvan intertwines environmental and political concerns through the extensive repurposing of discarded silverware — resources of plunder transmuted into an apparatus of liberation, with music as a constant tool for transcending historical violence.

“I have crossed an ocean, I have lost my tongue, from the root of the old one a new one has sprung…”
— Grace Nichols

Cosmic Whisper, 70" × 36". Macaw feathers (Ara ararauna), plexiglass, calabash (Crescentia cujete), recycled silverware, Holstein cow horn, tagua nut (Phytelephas), steel, silver, and paper.

Axis Mundi, 70" × 36". Antique silverware, bronze, carved horn, nest, plexiglass, painted calabash, carved tagua nut, sterling silver, 18kt gold, and labradorite.

Forked Tongue, 70" × 36". Antique silverware, bicycle wheel, Maasai beaded necklace, etched plexiglass, sterling silver, bronze figure, steel, cow horn, paper, and miscellaneous mechanical parts.