THE COTTON THAT CONNECTS, THE CLOTH THAT BINDS

Abstract

This essay uses the full text of a recent interview conducted with the Zanzibar-born, Lancashire resident Lubaina Himid to explore her memorial vision as articulated in her work and her comments on it. It will discuss the varied historical contexts of the work, particularly its black Atlantic resonances. It expands on the discussion on Revenge (1992) in my Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (2003) by more fully fleshing out Himid's preoccupation with the links between workers and slaves as articulated in her Cotton.com (2003) which used fabric patterns and text to imagine communications between these wage and chattel labourers separated by the Atlantic. It discusses the repercussions of the American Civil War for Manchester workers and Abraham Lincoln's gratitude for the support of these workers in the face of the Cotton Famine caused by the embargo on Southern produced cotton. It shows the importance of the 1919 statue of Lincoln and its inscriptions for articulating this solidarity and the way that Himid uses it as inspiration for her contemporary work on Manchester and the memory of slavery and abolition.

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