F is for Frances

Title
F is for Frances

Year
2016

Medium:
Coloured pencil and acrylic on plantation ledger pages

Dimensions:
154" x 16"

Photo Credit:
Mark King
Mark Doroba

Collector:
Collection of artist

By declaring F is for Francis, Davis attributes the speech sound to the muted female and restores her agency. Francis is called into our phonetic consciousness. [...] F is for a “Girl Slave” who worked on a plantation in Barbados. The land knew her. It bore her presence and still carries her narrative. Davis utilises her art-making to amplify its knowledge.

—Marsha Pearce, A Chorus of F-words in Rab Lands, exhibition catalogue, 2016

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Installation view as part of my solo exhibition, This Ground Beneath My Feet - A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands, The Idea Lab, The Warfield Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2016-2017

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The ledgers are symbolic of the imposition of colonial order, the drawings indicative of its incomplete reach.

—Andil Gosine, Wilding, exhibition catalogue, 2016

The last will and testament of Thomas Applewhaite written in August 1816, directed that six years after his death his “little favourite Girl Slave named Frances shall be manumitted and set free from all and all manner of Servitude and slavery whatsoever.” At the time, Applewhaite was the owner of Walkers - the site where I live, work and explore. This suite maps Frances’ name in a series of seven drawings on ledger pages. The letters forming her name comprise 18th and 19th century sherds found in the soil of former sugarcane fields, suggesting fragments of history understood only in part - usually through the words of the white colonial settler and most often a male voice. With Frances, another voice becomes audible and visible.