Motherland

1984 · Watercolour · 60.5 × 41.5 cm

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Victoria and Albert Museum

Londra, Regno Unito

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Ultimo cambio di stato: 25 set 2026
Fonte: Il museo

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This artwork was created by author and educator Stella Dadzie in 1984. It was subsequently used as the cover image for her book The Heart of the Race: Black Women in Britain (1985), co-written with fellow academics and activists Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan. The book was one of the first contemporary examinations of the lives and activism of Black women in Britain, and won the 1985 Martin Luther King Memorial Award. It was re-published in 2018.

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‘Motherland’ represents various aspects in the lives, experiences and histories of Black women in Britain. The central woman’s clothing have been interpreted by Dadzie from similar meanings of colour held within the African Diaspora. The red denotes blood shed through the violence of colonialism and enslavement, the yellow represents the gold of stolen wealth and the green symbolises stolen land. Lapping sea waves appear in the background. Dadzie noted that ‘…the sea changes colour to depict the journey she [the central figure] took from Africa and the Caribbean to the dark seas of the Mother Country with its grey skies and ugly factories behind her and its streets paved with fool's gold.’

Dadzie is a race, women’s rights and social justice campaigner and educator. She was a member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG) and became a founder member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).

Victoria and Albert Museum