Mitchener’s installation – [NAMES II] an evocation (2019-2021) – memorialises some of the 2,000 enslaved African people owned by an 18th-century sugar planter. He inventoried these people along with other possessions such as furniture and livestock, replacing their birth names with English names.
“Equally powerful and evocative is Elaine Mitchener‘s sound installation [NAMES II] (2019-2021), memorialising some of the 2,000 enslaved African people owned by an Aberdeenshire sugar planter in Jamaica.” The Gaudie
“Elaine Mitchener’s poignant (NAMES II) is a roll-call of the 2,000 enslaved African people owned by an 18th century Jamaican sugar planter, whose family came from Aberdeenshire.” The Press and Journal
“Elaine Mitchener’s [NAMES II] an evocation (2019–21), which memorialises some of the 2,000 enslaved people owned by a sugar-planter with family in Aberdeenshire. Through overlapping readings, each life is reduced to no more than an imposed English name, a gender and a monetary value.” Art Review