2022-ongoing, stone pigments and watercolour on handmade wasli paper, approx. 35 x 50cm irreg. each.
Studio assistance: Miri Badger.
Private collection.
To navigate the history of Indian indenture, Simpson began looking at historical documents, which predominantly came from the colonial archive. During her time navigating these archives, she encountered painful silences and gaps due to the absence of the voices of those indentured. These works acknowledge the complex relationship with this archive that she simultaneously relies on, even with its problematic gaps and biases. This archive was made to sell and promote the colonies, not for her and other descendants of this history to hold, touch and see.
After Postcards takes the flora referenced in the postcards and separates them from place. This landscape that could be from any of the so-called ‘sugar colonies’ is taken out of its context and separated. Just like how people were taken and displaced through the system of indenture and colonisation, the landscape was shifted, taken and displaced with ongoing environmental impacts still occurring – similarly as the ongoing trauma experienced generationally continues.