Trans Atlantic Slavery - African Artist Hazoume

I recently had the fortune of viewing a free, thought provoking exhibition in British Museum commemorating 200 Years of the Abolition of Trans Atlantic Slavery.
It was a feast for my visual senses, my ears, as well as for my mind, which has often struggled to come to terms with the intellectual legacy of colonialism in India and the question of whether the past and colonial history, have a bearing on the modern Indian consciousness. And the question of whether, if they have a bearing, what could it likely be ?
The exhibition was hosted by The British Museum and was the creation of an artist from Republic of Benin in West Africa - Romuald Hazoume. It was billed as artwork and a meditation on human greed and exploitation, the Atlantic Slave Trade of the past, and the different forms of oppression that continue today.
The exhibition brochure informed me that the 25 March 1807 Act of the British Parliament, banning Atlantic Slave Trade, was in response to the anti slavery campaigning of a British anti slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. It seems abolition was ultimately achieved by the continual resistance of enslaved people like Toussaint L'Ouverture who led the slave revolution in 1791 in Haiti.
However, it was another over thirty years before slavery itself was abolished through out the British Empire.
The European links with, and interest in Africa over last 500 years - Portuguese, French, British, Dutch, Spanish, Germans, Italians colonists - have had very colourful and intricate ( synergistic and competitive), and the motivations of the slavery banning by British Parliament, were no doubt more than the campaigning of Mr Clarkson and resistance led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and experts have studied some of these motivations.

It was heartening as an Asian writer, to confront the reflections of a contemporary middle aged, African artist - on history, legacy of colonialism, the present day space for discussions on colonialism, the brief discussions of neo liberalism and neo colonialism, in which there might be no need to make the debates amenable to Western ears and sensibilities.
Visual arts offer a wealth of such opportunities, especially in the hands of a multi talented Aftrican artist, working in many mediums and media - like Hazoume.
I look forward to seeing a tradition of Asian and African exchanges on legacy of colonialism established, especially in the visual arts and what is called intermedia, where artists are not constrained by European sensibilities / moderators / gate keepers - and can explore common understandings in more universal settings.
Hazoume's comment echoes with my sensibilities, when I examine the environment of the Liverpool slave ship he has represented with oil cans. He says of his West African people from the Mono River estuary, Grand Popo -
" They didn't know where they were going,
but they knew where they had come from.
Today they still don't know where they are going,
and they have forgotten where they come from."
- We, the big strong Africans, the Yoruba, we caught our brothers from Nigeria, and sold them to the White Man.
Nagarjuna - 06 May 2007