The decay of Shelley Miller's “Trade”

THE ROOMS PRESENTS //

**Shelley Miller. Trade (2020). Powdered icing sugar, gelatin and edible pigments. Commissioned by The Rooms.**

The mural offers a commentary on the instability of power and corruption. The imagery fades, either in the sun or from rain, similar to how truths of the past can be washed away and forgotten.

The mural, “Trade” by Shelley Miller, was commissioned by The Rooms for the exhibition “What Carries Us: Newfoundland and Labrador in the Black Atlantic” which was on display from Feb 28-Sept 7, 2020. The exhibition, which combined contemporary artworks with historical objects, revealed the little-known history of Newfoundland and Labrador’s place in global migration and exchange. The blue and white colours reference Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and English ceramics and the trade in sugar and slaves that accompanied European colonization from the 1500s to the 1800s.

Installed outdoors from November 12th – December 10th, visitors watched the mural fall apart over time. The erosion and decay that the mural underwent outside, in the elements, is a metaphor for the destructive side of sugar’s past in Newfoundland and Labrador.