Still Life with Moor and Porcelain Vessels, after Juriaen van Streeck, c. 1670

Cobalt Blue, oil, and acrylic on canvas

142 x 120 cm

Cobalt has been used to create vivid blue art objects for centuries. Initially, it was only used in ceramic glazes, most famously to make the ornate blue patterns on Chinese porcelain.

In the 15th century, the Dutch dominated the porcelain trade from China to Europe, driven by a growing consumer class in the Netherlands. Chinese porcelain met the desires of this consumer class for the exotic, cultivated by their colonial wealth extracted from lands and people worldwide.

Simultaneously, Dutch painters produced artworks for this consumer class, depicting their wealth and luxurious lifestyle. These paintings showcased a variety of luxurious commodities, such as oysters, oranges, tea, jewels, Persian rugs, blue and white porcelain, and most notably, enslaved people. In “Still Life with Moor and Porcelain Vessels”, an enslaved person from North Africa is at the apex of the composition, holding a blue and white porcelain dish. Enslaved Africans were common in such paintings, symbolizing power and wealth for the art collector and enacting profound subjugation through painterly representation.

The relationship depicted in “Still Life with Moor and Porcelain Vessels” between laborer, commodity, and consumer continues today. But now, this relationship is obscured by sleek commodities that hide their internal components. Cobalt is an integral mineral in rechargeable batteries, making it omnipresent yet unseen in our everyday lives. Currently, over 70% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mined by Congolese people often forced to work in life-threatening conditions and debt bondage. On the surface, we may believe that the DRC is a post-colonial nation protected by international human rights. However, the coercive extraction of value from the DRC into imperial centers continues, and modern slavery is rife in the cobalt supply chain.