Proposal for Mural ” Frederick Douglass in Cork” @ Cork Unitarian Church
I have chosen as a main theme the strong face of Frederick Douglass where his hair morphs into leaves of the painted tree reflecting the real tree in the location and the style and colouring of the types of illustrations during Douglass’s lifetime and using the illustrations from the newspapers of the era depicting the slave trade
The project would have a dedicated website / or webpage on an existing website ( Unitarian Church) which would elaborate on the theme of the mural that visitors to the courtyard could easily access. The gradual colouring of the tree’s leaves reflects the transition to the more enlightened world we live in today.
There will be a mixed media element to the mural but mainly painted using acrylic paint and sealed to protect it from the weather, mixed media elements will include wood panels painted or printed and superimposed on the wall
EG: the slave ships printed on plywood and sealed with resin
There could be circular panels with representations of Corks Multi Cultural Inclusive society painted or designed by new arrivals to cork representing the fruits of the work begun by Douglass in his visit to Cork
I have included a few versions of how the mural could develop
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- An African woman, captured for the Caribbean slave trade, is whipped. Groups of slaves are leaving the port area in coffles. The Atlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were Africans from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires. No artist credited, 18th century.
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- 19th century illustration of a slave caravan in Africa. Artwork by Paul Gaffarel in 1894.