How this event came about:

“ Transfer:” to convey or cause to pass from one place, person or location to another; to make over the possession or legal title of; to move oneself from one location or job to another.

Transfer/Installation

Transfer is a contemporary art piece that embraces migration in the Caribbean while spotlighting emigration that took place around the time of the Danish Transfer of the Virgin Islands to the United States on March 31, 1917. This exhibition utilizes video, installation, photography and oral history to reconstruct the event. The event is examined and fleshed out with the lived experience of individuals who experienced it. The migration process was initiated long before the transfer of the islands, yet the transfer initiated a change in status that changed the formal emigration procedures, which are preserved in the form of photo identification cards that were archived by the United States in the National Archives.

On the second floor of the National Archives II, in College Park, Maryland are a series of books that catalogue every item within the archive, which is organized by place. The Virgin Islands are assigned to Record Group 55. The dusty record book is a mundane list of items housed in the collection that are artifacts of events that took place in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Archives serve as carefully constructed warehouses of memory. In this case, the memory is constructed from the perspective of the United States government. What is lacking is the experience of the documented events from multiple vantage points. Oral histories, in the form of narratives, are alternative repositories of personal and collective memories. We “recontextualize” photo identification card images from the National Archives by projecting them onto pages of books with accompanying oral histories of Transfer Day.

This “recontextualization” of the images provides a resonant description, which challenges the nature of an event and highlights its reality as a process that is an accumulation of time before and since the event. Different voices emphasize the multifaceted nature of an event, which has different meanings for each individual. For Miss Meada, (Andromeada Keating Titley), the Transfer evoked memories of red American apples, a commodity that was given to children on that day and which became more common after the Transfer. The disconnect between the Danish past and American present were highlighted in her recollection of the singing of the Danish national anthem and the silence of the local community when the band played the American national anthem. For Aunt Sula (Ursula Krigger), the Transfer was remembered in terms of family connections, as an occasion where her brother played in the Naval band during the celebration. The significance of the event in her eyes was the consequent changes in the educational system initiated by the Americans. The historical event of Transfer Day is a snapshot that is created from the continuous processes of time and memory. Through narrative and archives the event is carded, combed, and woven into the fabric of historical memory of Transfer Day in the United States Virgin Islands.

This project highlights the visual and cultural landscape of the Virgin Islands in the era preceding the transfer and shortly thereafter, through a selection of images of people and oral histories of people that composed Virgin Islands society in the early twentieth century, and the historical memory of the event that has been passed on to later generations. Dr. Sprauve likened the images of the local people witnessing the event in Peppino Mabgravitte’s Transfer Day mural at Government House to ghosts. In this sense, the local community members were luminal observers to an event in which they had no active political role. In simulation of this, life size images of local inhabitants have been transferred onto a gauzy fabric and they serve as witnesses to the Transfer and the consequent changes that migration wrought. Unlike their still life counterparts in the painting, these individuals are in motion, signifying that on a local level the individuals were engaged in active transfer of themselves from one location to another, simultaneously on the outskirts of the political arena yet at the center of engaging
in local social practices, such as travel, that shaped and were shaped by the Transfer event.

This project attempts to evoke critical thinking about the processes of migration in the islands and the changes it has wrought since Transfer Day, March 31, 1917. It also encourages individuals to explore the history and stories of the people who shaped the Virgin Islands into what it has become eighty eight years later.

By Lori Lee

In collaboration with Edgar Endress
and Janet Cook-Rutnik