Sanctuary for the Internal Enemy: an Ancestral Odyssey at Kenkeleba House

Lunar Eclipse of 1815: For Colonial Marine, Sergeant Ezekiel Loney of the 4th Company, Royal British Navy by Tina Dunkley 2018 Cyanotype, silkscreen, 35 x 24″

A multimedia solo exhibition, TINA MARIA DUNKLEY presents prints, assemblages, textiles and mixed media works based on her recent publication, The Merikins: Forgotten Freedom Fighters in the War of 1812. While it is known that many enslaved Africans accepted a British Proclamation issued April 2, 1814 to board ships to the colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as free men, this exhibition is a dark examination of the enslaved Africans who escaped bondage and determined to bear arms for the British during the War of 1812. Through meticulous investigation Dunkley traced her maternal ancestry and learned of the plight of her ancestor, Ezekiel Loney, and other freedom fighters who fled a Virginian plantation in 1814. Loney was among 4,000 former slaves who, after the war, were settled in South Trinidad and called themselves Merikins, a creolization of “American”.

Memory Jug Series, #7, by Tina Dunkley 2014, 30 x 22″ Polyester plate lithograph, cyanotype, watercolor

SANCTUARY FOR THE INTERNAL ENEMY is created in homage to her ancestors and includes a video of a performance, Manifest Odyssey, that presents a series of rituals Dunkley maintains guided her throughout her research.