ABSTRACT
This chapter uses Junadry Leocaria’s poignant performance of Sugar Coated at the Mauritshuis as a point of departure from which to consider the many silences that have resonated in scholarly discourses about collections and institutions associated with the transatlantic slave trade. In so doing, it argues for the need to expand the types of evidence considered in the historiography of many art historical collections and sites, in order to foreground some of the lived experiences of the often-erased enslaved bodies who toiled to procure the opulence on display. Thinking beyond national boundaries also allows us to elucidate the many intertwined exchanges across space and time, many of which continue to have contemporary resonance. As Leocaria’s intervention so aptly exemplified, incorporating sound, movement, and critical reflection about what has been excluded from the hallowed walls of cultural institutions represents a critical step towards decolonization.
