Dance of Malaga, 2019
Uncovering the Past, Imagining the Future
In the 19th century, Malaga, a small island off the coast of Maine, was settled by an autonomous multiracial community — including many interracial couples. The entire community was evicted by the governor in 1912, and its inhabitants dispersed. In his examination of the island’s little-known history, Theaster Gates uses film to create a speculative future of what might have been, engaging in the recovery of a group that was marginalized both in its lifetime and by history. Interspersing dance, musical interludes, commercials, home videos, historical texts and decrees, and scenes from the 1959 film Imitation of Life, the artist imagines what might have been had the people of Malaga been able to remain. In doing so, he envisions a world that operates outside systemic racism, while also reminding viewers of the violent legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws and other forms of oppression.
That’s the reason why making art is my political and social platform, and my spiritual and emotional platform. And that having an artistic practice as the primary platform allows me to move in and out more fluidly of the limitations that are fraught within other parts of hierarchical structures, including city government, including the academy, including queer gender studies, among other interdisciplinary fields. I want my protest to be in the labor of my artistic practice.”
–Theaster Gates, Brooklyn Rail interview, 2020
Learn more about Malaga Island, Maine
Like many other Black and integrated establishments, Malaga Island challenged societal and legal structures in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in the United States. The island off Maine’s southern coastline had evolved from a tiny settlement in the 1790s to a community descended from residents of nearby Phippsburg. The islanders were free to marry interracially and the then-illegal practice was overlooked by mainlanders. However, as the numbers of emancipated slaves, freemen and Black people living as citizens increased, so too did racialized violence against them.
After the primary economic boom of shipbuilding in Maine went into rapid decline at the turn of the 20th century, the island’s scenic locale became a destination for visitors. The islanders who had lived there for generations, but had no recognized legal claim to the property, were easy prey for a government seeking to capitalize on the State’s resources.
From 1902–12, the government carried out a campaign against what were declared “immoral behaviors” — the presence of Black people, interracial marriage and smoking on the island. As a result, the settlement became despised throughout the region, and those who lived there had little support to sustain their lives. In 1912, the county sheriff evicted those who lived on the island from the only home they had ever known and entire families were forced to relocate.
Many Black and interracial settlements at or after this time followed a similar, if not more violent, pattern of dispossession incited by racism. The story of Malaga serves as a warning of how the erasure of history, bigoted persecutions and racial violence continues to traumatize generations of families, as well as the societies that remain in the orbit of this trauma.
–Jaimeson Daley, Ed.D. student in Educational Leadership, California State University, Sacramento
Recommended reading and video provided by UC Davis professor Justin Leroy (History)
Surya Milner, Inhabited: The Story of Malaga Island, Bowdoin Magazine, Fall 2020.
"Making the Past Visible in the Present: Malaga Island and Eugenics in Main” session at Legacies of Eugenics in New England Conference: Part 2, October 2021 with Hannah Marcus (Harvard University), Katie McBrien (Maine state archivist), Daniel Minter (artist) and Stephen Black (artist), 2021.