Objects of Contention: Art and Craft in the French Penal Colony of New Caledonia

In recent years, the creative practices of individuals subjected to various forms of captivity have become a vibrant field of study known as carceral aesthetics. However, despite the long and far-reaching history of penal transportation, the art and craft produced in penal colonies around the world have received little attention. My project, Objects of Contention: Art and Craft in the French Penal Colony of New Caledonia (ObCo), will contribute to these debates and offer new perspectives on the relationship between creation and oppression in colonial New Caledonia (1853–1946). Yet this research will not solely focus on the art and craft produced by some of the 30,000 common law prisoners, repeat offenders, and political prisoners transported to the Pacific archipelago in an effort to rid metropolitan France from its so-called dangerous class. It will also include the study of the creative practices of the Kanak, the Indigenous people of New Caledonia whose land France seized to establish the colony and whose history has typically been told in isolation. In addition to facing similar forms of detention, exile, and extractive labor, ObCo will show how the stringent control measures experienced by the Kanak and their progressive confinement to reservations expand the study of art and captivity well beyond the confines of the prison’ walls. In doing so, ObCo will not only fill a critical gap in the history of carceral aesthetics but also deepen our understanding of the historical conditions that fuel New Caledonia’s current waves of political and civil unrest. I will pursue this interdisciplinary research project under the guidance of Benoît Trépied, an anthropologist specializing in the history of citizenship in New Caledonia, in program co-led by Prof. Trépied called “Ethnography of domination: theoretical and methodological practices” at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.