joscelyn gardner

This full-colour 48-page visual arts project commissioned by Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism for their Visual Life of Catastrophic History project, under a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, was published in Small Axe, Issue 37. Titled A Collection of Creole Portrait Heads of the Female Sex, the project takes the form of a faux 18th century folio with printed images and texts. The frontispiece reads "A Collection of Creole Portrait Heads of the Female Sex; Together with Inscriptions of particular Names and Incidents worthy of Some Memory; Intended as an Essay Towards Answering the Various Deficiencies, Vacancies, etc. in the History of the British West Indies; Translated from Asides in the Private Diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, Esq., Overseer of Egypt Estate in Jamaica; and Adorned with Facsimiles of 10 Engraved Lithographs; Displaying the Exotic Flowering Plants used by Enslaved Women to Destroy their Progeny; And the Curious Iron Collars used to Punish them for these Deeds."

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The ten portraits are taken from the Creole Portraits III: “bringing down the flowers…”  suite of hand-coloured stone lithographs.