Taylor Le Melle in conversation with Derica Shields

Taylor Le Melle and Derica Shields
Wednesday 31 July, 19.00–21.00
Rijksakademie Reading Room
Entrance free, RSVP via publicprogramme@rijksakademie.nl

Le Melle and Shields previously explored together a mutual interest in Spillers’ theorisation of how, for racialised women, property law falls down on the flesh, on sex and on intimacy. During a 2019 exhibition in Cambridgeshire, England, Le Melle commissioned Shields to do two days’ research into an 18th century English court case which debated whether the legal rights of an owner by way of marriage superseded the rights of an owner by way of purchase. Marriage won.  

This conversation at the Rijksakademie picks up on this thread. Le Melle is still rooting around in that murky swamp of an era where the hierarchies of property ownership that we still live with today were being established; and is now using plant material to reconcile a few debts owed to our bodies. Shields got stuck on the continuations made possible by (not despite!) legal change, and emerged by studying how enslaved West Indians recuperated when they no longer believed that the law that enslaved them was a vehicle to freedom. She wrote a book in the process and qualified as a massage therapist, in part, to integrate its lessons.