2022
Materials: mould food grade silicon (object mould), sugar

yassinebenabdallah.com 

Dividing his time between La Reúnion and France, Yassine Ben Abdallah is an emerging designer whose research-based practice focuses on issues of heritage, cultural identity, and belonging. His work addresses the historical and contemporary afterlife of colonial wounds in postcolonial societies.

Reflecting on the fact that the history and culture of the oppressed are rarely embodied in material objects, Ben Abdhallah’s ephemeral The Bittersweet Memory of the Plantation comprises a machete-form made of sugar, designed as a poetic artifact to honor the experiences of enslaved and indentured laborers of the sugar plantations of La Réunion, whose material culture has been either stolen or destroyed through the wear of colonial times.

Over the course of the exhibition, the dripping sugar machete begs the question: Whose heritage and history are allowed to be preserved, narrated, and immortalized in a museum or exhibition setting?