Hooda Shawa rewrites the fairytales in England's 18th century country houses, exposing the Indian and Palestinian foundations of Derbyshire's Kedleston Hall.
Nestled amidst acres of rolling hills, Derbyshire's Kedleston Hall boasts artistic masterpieces, Peacock dresses, and even an 'Eastern Museum' - all furnished from a fairytale. But this neo-classical mansion has a darker past, as the ancestral home of the English Curzon family, including Lord Curzon, who served as the Viceroy of India (1899-1905) and Foreign Secretary (1919-1924) in the British Mandate in Palestine. Now part of the National Trust's Colonial Countryside Project, Kedleston Hall speaks to the hidden connections between historic slavery and plantation ownership, and contemporary wealth and political power - including the collapse of India's textile industry, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement today. In the wake of her own childhood experiences, Hooda Shawa explores what Kedleston Hall means for her own British Kuwaiti heritage and, beyond the Raj, what Palestine's lesser-known occupation reveals about its continued struggle for independence now.
PRESENTER: Hooda Shawa Qaddumi, Founder and Managing Director of TAQA: Toward Achieving Quality in Art, a Kuwait-based company that produces and promotes independent cultural and artistic initiatives. They write for projects including 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object.
ART: Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire (18th Century).
IMAGE: 'Kedleston Hall'.
SOUNDS: Ergo Phizmiz.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.
Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936
Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines
Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) (EMPIRE LINES x Invasion Ecology)
Twist, LR Vandy (2024) (EMPIRE LINES x October Gallery, Chatham Ropery)
Melted into the Sun, Saodat Ismailova (2024) (EMPIRE LINES x Fondazione In Between Art Film, Venice Biennale)
Decolonised Structures (Queen Victoria), Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (2022-2023) (EMPIRE LINES x The Serpentine Galleries, Venice Biennale)
Dreams Have No Titles, Zineb Sedira (2022-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x Whitechapel Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Venice Biennale)
Giolo’s Lament, Pio Abad (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Ashmolean Museum)
Camera Obscura, Pia Arke (1990) (EMPIRE LINES x John Hansard Gallery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art)
Medium and Memory, Griselda Pollock (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x HackelBury Fine Art)
Lost Threads, Lubaina Himid (2021, 2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Holburne Museum, British Textile Biennale)
The Black Atlantic, Paul Gilroy (1993-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live, with Radical Ecology)
Noko Y3 Dzen (There’s Something in the World), Serge Attukwei Clottey (2018-Now) (EMPIRE LINES Live at the Eden Project, Cornwall)
Habitat, Taloi Havini (2017) (EMPIRE LINES x Artes Mundi 10, National Museum of Wales, Chapter)
Freud: El Mago de los Sueños (The Wizard of Dreams), Vidas Ilustres Comic Book (1963)
The Madras College of Arts and Crafts, India (1850-Now) (EMPIRE LINES x The Noble Sage, Brunei Gallery)
Queer Feet, Osman Yousefzada (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Charleston)
Learning from Artemisia, Uriel Orlow and Orchestre Jeunes Étoiles des Astres (2019-2020) (EMPIRE LINES x Eden Project)
White Zombie, Victor Halperin (1932) (EMPIRE LINES x Visions of Haiti, Barbican Cinema)
The Black Triangle, Armet Francis (1969) (EMPIRE LINES x Autograph)
Whites Can Dance Too, Kalaf Epalanga, translated by Daniel Hahn (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Kizomba Design Museum, Africa Writes 2023)
Where Worlds Meet, Maha Ahmed (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Leighton House)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL