Joshua Woolford talks about A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, a book chronicling the atrocities happening in the Caribbean in the 16th century
This article is taken from the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine:
“I discovered A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies through my research into the Caribbean – specifically Dominica, the tiny, mountainous island my family comes from. Bartolomé de las Casas, a bishop, wrote this account of the atrocities happening in the region in the mid-16th century to send to Spain – he thought if the Spanish royal family knew, they would put an end to it. They didn’t. When I read his book I couldn’t stop thinking about the injustice. But I also had to come to terms with the fact that my own family, having African heritage, wasn’t actually from Dominica. The first European settlers displaced or killed the native population and replaced them with an African workforce to work on plantations. My ancestral claim to this place comes at the displacement of the native population. We don’t have documentation. Stories there were passed down through talking, sharing, movement, dance – embodied ways of processing, holding and sharing information. My art practice became the only output I had to process this information. To try to figure out my place in it and how I can move forward.”
The artist Joshua Woolford’s transdisciplinary practice materialised first in abstract painterly scenes, before they began creating spectral performances and raw sculptures as well as using sound, video and installation. Whatever the medium, the message persists – a moving and incisive confrontation of humankind’s position within a violent sociopolitical landscape. Over the coming months, the artist, who was formerly the research and interpretation artist in residence at Tate Britain, and one of Bloomberg’s New Contemporaries for 2023, will travel to the Caribbean, including their grandmother’s birthplace of Dominica for the first time. Their intention: to build a connection to the island, the indigenous population living on it and their practices, crafts and performance.
Hand-printing: Merrick d’Arcy-Irvine
This story features in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, which is on sale now.
