A history of Black diaspora artists in Scotland

This chapter seeks to bring together and offer an overview of the art histories of Black diaspora artists in Scotland across sculpture, painting, photography, moving image, performance and installation, focusing in particular on exhibition histories and collections, while examining how institutions and histories of art in Scotland have often racialised and marginalised these art histories and practices. Following Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill’s framework, it explores a range of work by Black artists “in, from and connected to” Scotland, and draws inspiration from the Scots-Ghanaian artist Maud Sulter’s emphasis on the significance of diaspora as an analytical concept which necessitates multi-perspectival, anti-essentialist and global approaches in relation to Scottish art production. As such, the chapter considers how Black diaspora artists have vitally examined issues including nation, belonging, identity, history, ecology, landscape, and stewardship, particularly in the context of Scotland’s active participation in and enrichment through the British Empire, including the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, the plantation system in the Caribbean and colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean. Through the networks and connections established by Black diaspora artistic practices and anti-racist activism across time and place, the concept of “history” itself is placed under pressure regarding questions of nation-building and state-formation, demanding that audiences consider who gets remembered and memorialised.