Jessica Ashman- “Those that do not smile will kill me”: Decolonising Jamaican Flora
Posted on by Fay Whitfield.
Artist Jessica Ashman
Artist Jessica Ashman discusses her new commission with museum curators Rhian Rowson (Natural History) and Julia Carver (Art).
Julia Carver: Can you tell us about the University of the Arts Decolonising Arts Institute’s 20/20 programme?
Jessica Ashman: The exhibition comes out of a commissioning programme from UAL called 20/20: pairing 20 artists of colour with 20 museums across the country. It seemed like a natural choice for me to pick Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) when I was applying for this opportunity, as I was really interested in Carnival histories of the black British diaspora and increasingly, black British people’s connections to the natural world (mainly as a keen allotment holder myself!).
JC: I’m really excited that you decided to work with the natural history collection. It’s easy to look to other collections when thinking about decolonizing, but biology collections don’t have an obvious colonial context – until you look more closely.
JA: It was discovering the letters of a Scottish Pharmacist, John Small, in the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC), that pushed me towards biology. In one of these letters, Small lists the natural resources of 1800’s Jamaica and says that Jamaica is a “land of milk and honey”. This letter portrays a paradise of resources to make money from, but Jamaica would not have been a paradise to enslaved and indentured people. Rhian [Rowson] showed me the botanical drawings of Rev. John Lindsay and the herbarium of Arthur Broughton, and we discussed how both these collections demonstrate extraction and exploitation rife in botanical sciences.
JC: Jessica, can you tell us who Arthur Broughton and John Lindsay were?
JA: John Lindsay was a priest who inhabited Jamaica in the mid 1700’s. He married into a plantation family and benefited from the work of enslaved people who worked the land of his wife’s family. He illustrated the flora and fauna of the island, and collected them in unpublished volumes called ‘Elegancies of Jamaica’.
Dr. Arthur Broughton was a physician, botanist and horticulturist from Bristol who moved to Jamaica in 1784. During his time there, he collected many samples of the flora of Jamaica in the form of dried flowers, leaves and plants.
JC: Rhian, can you tell us about their collections in the museum?
Rhian Rowson: These ‘Elegancies of Jamaica’ are manuscripts of the flora and fauna of Jamaica. The largest and most comprehensive of these is rich in illustrations of the food plants. In 1796 these were bequeathed by Dr Arthur Broughton to a repository that later became Bristol Museums, along with his own volumes of pressed plants (three of which contained pressed plants collected in Jamaica between 1780s -1790s).
It is important to mention that these specimens were not necessarily collected by Broughton. He likely relied on the knowledge of the enslaved Africans to develop his understanding of the plants. He was certainly aided in collecting these plants from the dense forests.
JC: Can you tell us about the installation you are planning?
‘Higgler’s Defiance’ (2024) watercolour, Indian Ink, dyed scrim fabric. By Jessica Ashman
JA: My installation will cross many disciplines: silk painting, animation, soundscape and costumed musical performances. The exhibition will portray narratives of how enslaved and indigenous people engaged with the land for survival, resistance and celebration to form their own “paradise”.
The show will explore the medicinal and spiritual uses of plants by enslaved Jamaican and Maroon communities, centred around three women. Two will be enslaved individuals, the other a fictious deity that will speak to the rebellious history of carnival masquerade within the Caribbean, acting as a guiding light for the other women.
JC: How did you come up with the name for the exhibition?
JA: The exhibition title comes from an old Jamaican riddle about when to pick Ackee fruit; a component of Ackee and Saltfish, Jamaica’s national dish. Ackee is quite poisonous if you pick it when it isn’t ripe and so the riddle goes: “Me fader send me to pick out a wife; tell me to tek only those that smile, fe those that do not smile wi’ kill me!” When Ackee is ripe, the fruit opens or ‘smiles’, revealing that it is ready to eat.
JC: What was the journey that led you to creating the performances?
JA: I’ve been performing since 2017 and increasingly, performance and music have wormed itself into my arts practice. Myself and soundscape and performance collaborator, Tanya Auclair, are looking at a lot of Jamaican folk traditions, alternative time signatures which reflect the shape of plants, and a lot of doom and drone sounds. We really want to channel the energy of the characters in the show, acting as vessels for their thoughts, dreams and emotional journeys.
JC: What do you want visitors to take away from visiting the exhibition?
JA: I hope my exhibition really provokes thought and discussion on the people who often are behind the history of botanical sciences. My time researching in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery’s collection felt like a constant quest to find the stories of these people (some of whom were probably my ancestors) who are ‘missing’ in the archive, but I soon realised that I would have to be the one to bring out these narratives in my work.
You can visit “Those that do not smile will kill me”: Decolonising Jamaican Flora at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery from Saturday 22 February until Sunday 27 July 2025. Information on the performances to be released shortly, sign up to our newsletter for the latest updates.
This commission has been made possible by 20/20, a 3-year funded programme led by the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute, with funding from Freelands Foundation, Arts Council England and UAL.
