Sulter’s art and poetry need time and space

Maud Sulter, the photographer, artist, activist and poet, died in 2008 at the age of 47. She was of Ghanaian and Scottish descent and her life’s work was dedicated to challenging the myths and histories surrounding the African relationship with Europe. Sulter’s range of references was substantial and provocative. The viewer and reader are frequently confronted, so that they have to reassess their beliefs.

In the prose poem Blood Money (remix) Sulter writes about the lives of two fictional characters of African descent, Monique and Kwesi, living in Germany during the war.

When the war came Kwesi was made to wear

a red star for being a Communist and an inverted

black triangle — signifier of a race biology

categorisation. Monique could have escaped to France

and back to Cameroon but she would have had to leave

her husband and child. Would you?

This show revisits some of Sulter’s major projects and exhibitions including Syrcas. Sulter has used collage and photo-montage to combine disparate imagery in stark juxtaposition. The basis included a set of postcards of picturesque European mountain scenery, publications on African art and images from modern culture. These have been combined in the form of artefacts, including masks and dolls. The resulting small artworks have been photographically enlarged and are shown here as poster-sized prints.

Two black and white prints from the 1990 series Paris Noir show west African Ashanti Akua Mma dolls. They represent beauty and were carried by women in the belief that they aided conception. On one Sulter has written “Gwendolyn Bennett in Paris was homesick for New York” and on the other, “Langston Hughes Knew Paris Well”. Hughes was a poet and Bennett an artist.

Projects such as Hysteria, Zabat and Les Bijoux are more polished, professional and contemporary. Hysteria consists of photographic prints that re-imagine the life of the African American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1845-1907) who travelled from the US to Europe.

Sulter’s best known work, Zabat, presents contemporary black women artists, writers and musicians as a gallery of ancient muses, posed in conventional historical European costume, in sumptuous gold frames. The frames act as an ironic reference to a canon of western art in which black people are marginalised.

Numerous vitrines and display cases document aspects of Sulter’s life as a child with her Scottish grandfather, as a poet, and details of her work as an activist, editor and curator. Her talent deserves more exploration and a bigger venue.

Hillhead Library, Glasgow until 21 June