Ashanti Harris, Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

Ashanti Harris’ new commission for Edinburgh Art Festival, Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille, explores cultural identities, the collective experience of Carnival and the meeting of peripheral experiences through sculpture and live performance. Taking Faustin Charles’ 1981 novel Signposts of the Jumbie as a starting point, Harris infuses this commission with the essence of jumbies (Caribbean ghosts or spirits) as a way of linking past, present and future. 

The exhibition is situated in the courtyard of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, surrounded by working studios. When descending the concrete stairs, the first encounter with Harris’ work is a sculpture made of oil drums. The oil drums are instantly recognisable with the bright red and yellow logo of the Shell oil company. However, they have been cut down in size and are adorned with colourful glittering sequins – they are now the steel pans of Carnival. Upon closer inspection the steel pans seem to be incomplete – they have not yet received their tune. The recognition of the oil drums alongside their transformation into steel pans, which are still in a state of becoming, causes an eerie sensation. Harris’ sculpture confronts viewers with the Western oil industry’s presence in the Caribbean, questioning historic and contemporary colonialism.

The next sculpture the viewer encounters is made of intricately woven wire mesh. Towering tall, it resembles a set of wings with nine faces woven into them. Harris has created this sculpture, which is also worn in the live performance, to represent the Winged Being often associated with Carnival. The Winged Being in the courtyard of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop recalls a deity, one that has the potential to exist in liminal spaces between past, present, and future, carrying culture and history between geographical locations. The faces seem to represent a collection of different lives meeting through a single experience – in this case, Carnival.

Speaking with Harris, she describes the importance of collective and individual experience in the creation and reception of Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille. This is evident in the space in which the exhibition is displayed. The courtyard is surrounded by studios and open spaces where makers can work – and where Harris herself worked with other artists to create her sculptures. Another way the collective and individual is expressed is through the live performances. Three dancers, who each specialise in a different dance practice (Carnival, South Indian, and European Contemporary), interact with Harris’ sculptures to bridge gaps in understanding and temporalities. The three dancers incorporate a traditional quadrille in their movement; however, there is always one space open. Harris describes this open space as one that the audience can fill with their peripheral ideas, experiences, and knowledge.

Overall, Harris’ exhibition is one that explores the process of becoming; a Carnival in the making. An exhibition that celebrates peripheral knowledges and experiences and how they converge to create unique understandings. The intentional spaces and work-in-progress aspect of the work asks the audience to view the past in a new context.

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Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille showed at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2022

This piece was commissioned as part of Edinburgh Art Festival's Emerging Writers programme; scroll on to read more from writers in the programme