Re-entangling the Visual Archive

Funded by Collections Connections Communities

Funded by the University of Cambridge’s Collections-Connections-Communities (CCC) Strategic Research Initiative, Re-entangling the Visual Archive is a collaboration between Cambridge University Libraries, Anglia Ruskin University and Zambia Belonging.

The project will address inequalities of access to archives and encourage confident, innovative and creative engagements with challenging collections. Zambian-based visual artist Mainga Muvundika and photographer Edith Chiliboy will creatively engage with the problematic histories of archival material relating to Zambian identities and communities held in Cambridge University Libraries’ Royal Commonwealth Society and Centre of African Studies collections.

Taking Zambia as its nexus, and building on a successful 2022/3 CVC fellowship, 'An exhibition that nobody will see', this project will continue to explore how archival material could and should be considered, challenged and (re)used alongside the Zambia Belonging collection, a contemporary counter-archive established by Sana Ginwalla and built around unclaimed material found in the attic of the Fine Arts Studio on Chachacha Road in Lusaka.

Cambridge University Libraries’ Royal Commonwealth Society (RCS) and Centre of African Studies (CAS) collections

The RCS collection is an enormous repository of information, visual and textual, on the Commonwealth and Britain's former colonial territories. The RCS was founded in London in 1868 as the Colonial Society. As with other learned societies of this period, emphasis was placed on the creation of a library, reading room and meeting place to facilitate the exchange of knowledge relating to the colonies. By 1993, divorced from its original purpose and facing the prospect of being broken up and sold, the RCS library was transferred to Cambridge following a public fundraising campaign.

In the colonial period, Zambia (Northern Rhodesia until independence in 1964) tended to be overshadowed by its southern neighbours, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia until 1980) and South Africa. This imbalance is reflected in the content of the RCS collection. While the material relating to Zambia is comparatively small, it serves as a microcosm for the wider collection - the material is intrinsically problematic in that presents the perspective of the settler and the coloniser, and it is physically set apart from the communities it documents. Working with the Zambian-based artists presents an opportunity to interrogate the collection more rigorously through a creative lens.

The Cambridge Centre of African Studies (CAS) was founded in 1965 by the pioneering British anthropologist Audrey Richards (1889-1984). Richards, who had read Natural Sciences at Newnham College, was the first director of the East African Institute of Social Research at Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda, prior to building up the Centre. The CAS library supports the research and teaching needs of the African Studies MPhil cohort as well as being a hub for promoting research on Africa across the University.

The archival collections consist primarily of the personal papers of researchers associated with CAS since its founding in 1965, with particularly good coverage of Uganda, East Africa more generally, Nigeria and Lesotho. Alongside personal papers, the Centre houses an extensive collection of official publications, and political ephemera, photographs, slides and microform.

Zambian material from the RCS pamphlet collection

Zambian material from the RCS pamphlet collection

Zambian material as recorded in the RCS card catalogue

Zambian material as recorded in the RCS card catalogue

Impact

The project draws on Dr Kerstin Hacker’s research methodology, which 'embraces long-term collaboration to develop a radical, counter hegemonic, and critical creative practice leading to tangible transformational opportunities for all participants. By breaking the one-directionality of North-South knowledge flow the project creates a space of engagement in which unlearning, unknowing, and the process of reinvention can thrive.'

There are further opportunities to work with the Zambia Belonging (ZB) collection, a counter-archive, which in the words of Sana Ginwalla, 'is rooted in the desire to remedy and negotiate the inaccessibility and challenges of working with traditional archives by centering and making available the stories of ordinary people from the past and the present through digitization and artistic interventions. As singular identities become rare with globalization, migration and travel, we find ourselves finding new languages, vocabularies and platforms that cater to representing intersectional identities. By anticipating these shifts and developments for the future, ZB seeks an approach to archiving which is more reflective of the times and the diversity of human experiences.'

With the support of the Cambridge School of Art (Anglia Ruskin University), facilitated by Dr Hacker, the artists will have access to a suite of facilities from printmaking to dark rooms.

The artists will share methods of creative intervention and present new ways of engaging with archival collections, particularly problematic colonial-era collections.

Artistic outcomes and project documentation will be shared in a workshop and artist presentations, culminating in a end of project celebration to reflect on the two weeks. 

Outputs

Film

Watch the short film produced by Blazej Mikula (CUL) for an insight into the artists' experiences in Cambridge:

Artistic responses

The invited artists produced a series of evocative, compelling pieces of artwork in response to the collections they encountered during the project.

Explore some of the pieces below:

Item 1 of 4

Maingaila Muvundika, A Place of Shelter (2024)

Maingaila Muvundika, A Place of Shelter (2024)

Sana Ginwalla, re-design of 'The role of Indian minorities in Burma and Malaya' (2024)

Sana Ginwalla, re-design of 'The role of Indian minorities in Burma and Malaya' (2024)

Edith Chiliboy, wood print on fabric

Edith Chiliboy, wood print on fabric

Kerstin Hacker, photographic series on mining in Zambia (2024)

Kerstin Hacker, photographic series on mining in Zambia (2024)

The artists

Edith Chiliboy

Edith Sampa Chiliboy is a Zambian contemporary photographer, who invites you into a world of poetry without words. She believes photography is a journey, that allows her creativity to grow and helps her to make sense of the world. Through her poetic images she explores her societal roles and breaks them.

Most recently her work featured in the ‘Chaminuka Emerging Artists Exhibition’ (2022) and ‘Fractures’ by the Women's History Museum (2023). She was a contributing artist for the Flat Time House (UK) research initiative ‘Incidental Mpala’ in collaboration with Wayiwayi Art Studio (2023).

Maingaila Muvundika

Maingaila Muvundika is a Zambian visual artist and photographer whose work explores how different demographic elements of a community inform how people interact and navigate within the wider community.

Through costuming and the production of sets, Maingaila produces staged photographs that are deeply personal and observant. His practice probes aspects of individuality, fashion, beauty standards, spirituality and belonging as a discovery into how identity and sense of self is shaped.

More of the project team

Sally Kent

Principal Investigator and Curator, Royal Commonwealth Society collections

Sana Ginwalla

Project Consultant, artist, curator and founder of the Everyday
Lusaka Gallery and Zambia Belonging counter–archive

Kerstin Hacker

Project Consultant, artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University

Jenni Skinner

Co-Investigator and Library Manager of the African Studies Library

Eleanor Parmenter

Project Coordinator

Jennifer
Pagliuca

Project Coordinator

Collections items featured:

  • Collage from the CVC workshop, 'Putting our resources to work: transforming archives through creative strategies', Oct. 2023. (Photo credit: Sana Ginwalla)
  • Zambian material from the RCS pamphlet collection (RCS -52m) (Photo credit: Kerstin Hacker)
  • Zambian material as recorded in the RCS card catalogue (Photo credit: Sana Ginwalla)
  • Participants at the CVC workshop, 'Putting our resources to work: transforming archives through creative strategies', Oct. 2023. (Photo credit: Rhianna Hill and Kai Hocknell)