Reconfiguring History
By Julia Steinberger
Combining her love for cultural exploration and her talents in design, Barnard senior Julia Molloy developed a project to help a community in Ghana connect with its heritage while studying abroad with the School for International Training (SIT). Drawing from the rich human history of Ghana’s 522-year-old Elmina Castle, Molloy created a series of sketches and models of the former home to both slaves and soldiers, depicting its personal significance through the eyes of its diverse inhabitants.
With funds from Barnard’s TOW Fellowship Grant, Molloy returned to Ghana to spend her summer vacation continuing the project. The Ghanaian community showed her its appreciation for her efforts by installing her project into the castle’s permanent museum.
Molloy, an architecture major, was enchanted with the castle at first sight. “I thought it was just this magical castle on the beach,” she said of the first European structure in tropical Africa, built by the Portuguese in 1481. In learning the castle’s history, however, Molloy discovered that although it had originally been built for trade in goods, its purpose had darkened with the advent of the slave trade. The walls that she found so structurally beautiful had imprisoned thousands of men, women and children as they waited to take the next step in their horrific journey.
While exploring the castle, sifting through written accounts, and conducting personal interviews, Molloy developed a series of drawings. These models exposed the unseen significance of the castle’s structure, such as the hierarchy of power constructed among the inhabitants who lived from its uppermost tiers to its lowest vaults, and a drawing of the “door of no return” through which Africans sold into slavery made their final exit from their homeland.
“This type of analysis allows for a design that documents the histories that aren’tcommunicated to people,” Molloy said. Her project, which she presented
in December as a panel member of the “Beyond New York” conference
sponsored by SIT www.sit.edu/news/2003/ beyond_newyork_2.html, has evolved into her senior thesis. Currently, she is creating a web site that will project the three perspectives of Elmina Castle: the views of the creator, the inhabitant and the observer. The site will incorporate architectural drawings as well as personal memoirs, spoken quotes and traditional views of the castle.
“I’m interested in how different perspectives affect the significance of the monument,” Molloy said. “The Ghanaian youth who move from their villages into large cities begin to speak English, they begin to assimilate, and they seem to be losing the customs they’ve been living with for so many years. I think it’s important to document these little-known histories and to preserve some of this information.”
The idea of lost culture holds special significance for Molloy, who discovered a part of her own heritage for the first time at age 18. A grant from the Sons of Italy allowed her to study at Via Reggio, Colegio Columbo during the summer between high school and college. Molloy, whose mother is Italian, was finally able to connect to her family’s history.
“My grandparents were born in Italy, but they never spoke about their background; they did not want to be thought of as immigrants. Over that summer, I heard Italian spoken for the first time.”
Having studied Italian at Barnard, Molloy wanted to return to Italy, but she also wanted to experience culture in a society that contrasted more starkly with her own. She chose to spend the first half of her junior year on SIT’s Arts and Culture program in Ghana and the second half in Bologna, Italy with the Eastern College Consortium.
Molloy admits that after a semester in Ghana where she learned to speak Twi, lived with a Ghanaian family, studied with a traditional midwife, and spent a month on her Elmina project, the transition to Italian life was culturally shocking. As she became more comfortable, however, she learned to embrace Italian culture and to re-embrace her own culture. When her mother and sisters visited, they drove to the town where her great-grandparents had lived and shared a meal with relatives they had never met.
In
addition to her other projects, Molloy is currently designing a new dance
studio for the college and applying for travel grants toward other art
projects centered on histories of cultural monuments. She hopes to teach
her process of cultural analysis through design to students of her own
one day.
Julia Molloy is a native of Berkeley, CA. Contact her at jeweledjamm@yahoo.com