The Box: Journeys with Mai Revisited

This exhibition closes on the 14th June 2026

I already visited this exhibition but realised that I had not given it as much time or focus as I would have liked.  I had done a lot that day and visited this exhibition before and after my timed visit to Beryl Cook.  I was also battling closing time.  

I also start to get a bit frazzled dealing with lots of people.  It's partly about the noise splitting my focus, but I also have to move around people and it all just takes more concentration.  I find I don't take as much in while reading.  I don't make the same connections.  

I must admit, I though it would be a relatively quick visit....  watch the two films I missed, have a quick look at things again and move on, but it didn't work out that way.  I lost several hours in there and I am glad I made the effort to go back, this exhibition deserved the thought.

Sadia Pineda Hamsed's film Anak Where Did we Stay? was a film being shown in the media lab.  This room has a long screen on one side and then two shorter screens on the end walls.  It can be configured in various ways and this time it was divided in to five sections.  One at each end and three on the long screen.  Each section showed different pieces of film but not all at the same time.  This meant that everyone's experience of this film would differ, depending where you looked and gave your attention for longest.  There was an overarching soundtrack which featured people talking.

Sadia is British born of Pakistani and Filipina descent and the film looks at the story of her mother's move from one set of islands to another, from the Phillipines to the UK.  Family films made with a camcorder are mixed with pieces from the archive at the Box.

Her mother travelled here by plane with a neighbour to work as a nurse.  She talks of how she had very little money and immigration took her sandwiches.  Footage of other nurses she worked with, her wedding, a festival where her culture was shared.  Her mother reminisces on what it was like to move here.  She talks of cultural displacement, how she loves her home culture and misses it, it's her first love, but it's better for her to be here, with her family of mixed cultures as this is somewhere they can all be at home.

This does not mean it has always been easy, it clearly has not.  She talks of dealing with being assaulted but how there wasn't time to think about it as she was so busy working to earn money to send home.  She was constantly in motion in those days.  But the times were difficult in the Thatcher years and scary, with assault a lingering threat.  There is footage of an Enoch Powell protest.

But through all of it, there is dancing, it is obviously a huge part of her culture and something much loved.  At nurses parties, at their wedding and at the festival, they danced.  It's hard to villify a culture that just wants to dance with you.  Why would you want to?

The cultural displacement is talked of with humour...  of going to Liverpool to see the Beatles but not realising that Liverpool Street was somewhere else and just seeing the market.  Footage of Beatlemania of the time and Sadia visiting the Beatle Bums on the Hoe (a sculpture that gives the position each Beatle sat in so you can replicate a famous Beatles photo taken on the Hoe).  

As much as there is footage of her family, there is also footage of white families of the time and it's clear they were living different experiences.  I also especially enjoyed the  footage of the basking sharks, huge shadows passing a headland.

I saw most of the film on my first visit but had not realised and I saw it in full this time.  Plus a little extra.  But being more relaxed on this visit, I took it in better.  Immigrants are just people.  They have beautiful things to share with us and they work really, really hard.  They do not deserve persecution.

I moved on to the next film, Expedition into a Volcano by Mohini Chandra.  This film was projected on to sheets of muslin hanging from the ceiling.  This gave a really interesting effect, you could and could not see the film in it's entirety.  It was fragmented but beautiful.

The film took footage from different films at held at The Box.  One of the films was an educational film, showing explorers visiting a volcano for science.  Another talked about India as part of the empire.  It used these to show a perspective on empire and it's use and exploitation of physical resources.  This was done using the words of the original footage.  

For instance, the narrator talked about how the volcano was an easy climb using ropes, while showing footage of porters carrying huge amounts on their heads.  I guess it is an easier climb if you have other people to carry all of your things for you.  They also talked about how Northern (European) men were needed to interject a bit of vim and vigour in to these place.

Footage of India, talked about the wealth of India in raw resources and how they now flowed out through ports where there used to be sandy beaches.  These raw resources enabled them to buy the manufactured goods they so desperately needed.  Reframing this exploitation as helping a place is really tricky.  Who decided what they needed?  Who benefitted?  Who made money?

It is us that desperately needed these raw materials.  In getting them, we subverted the politics of these countries, irreparably damaged their culture and their environment.  And we pretended we were helping them.  

The film makes it clear that so often these scientific explorations appeared to be benevolent but actually, this exploration was a precursor to exploitation of resources.  So often this has been mining and this has been horrifically damaging in many places and of little benefit to local people.

Black and white footage from these films was interspersed with footage of coral reefs and plants, beautiful unspoilt beaches.  I think some of the footage of plants was possibly shot at Mount Edgcumbe which shows another exploitation and how we benefitted.  we took all these plants to improve our own environment.  This footage was just beautiful and I loved how it looked across the different layers of muslin.  

The layout of the muslin and the chairs meant you could sit at 'the front' or at the back or sides and see the film from different perspectives.  I moved to the back especially to see the beautiful plant footage from a different angle and was not disappointed.

The soundtrack of the film was a man, probably more than one, speaking perfect old fashioned BBC English of the time.  They were smug and a little pompous, because of course we were the best.  The assumptions and bias were so obvious.  The soundtrack was produced by some Devon based folk musicians and was beautiful.  I found as I explored the next room, fragments of this music would merge with the soundtrack of that room in a haunting way.

All of the displacement of people and exploitation of the British Empire started with Cook's voyages of discovery and the next room explored this through art.  I had been through this room pretty thoroughly before but it was nice to have a calmer, quieter visit.  One thing that stood out was that the pictures of the people who had a say in how they were portrayed, the rich and powerful British, were painted in lavish oil portraits, while the pictures of the indigenous people were much less lavish, often single colour pencil drawings.

Beneath one such picture of a chief, there was a quote talking about his air of calm and wisdom but looking at his picture, I saw nothing of that.  Things didn't match up.  People were not given the same viewpoints.  

There were three pictures of Mai and each was different.  Portrait of Mai by Sir Joshua Reynolds is a glorious painting but looking at the other two pictures, it is clear that Reynolds had worked his magic and made Mai more...  He is a beautiful man in this portrait, incredibly so, but is he also a little Anglicized?  His features are a little different in the other two pictures.  

I don't believe that all those British nobles, Captains etc looked as noble, powerful etc etc in real life.  They paid for their portraits after all.  As much as artists were documenting what they saw on the voyages, they were also showing bias and there were viewpoints to be promoted.

Apart from Mai, from memory, the only other oil painting of an indigenous person shown in colour and oils was a very beautiful Chief's daughter who was very much admired.  This is also problematic.  The men on these voyages were very much interested in the women they visited.  It is well known that they paid women for sex and iron nails were often used.  This practice was so prolific that it had to be banned for the structural stability of the ships to be preserved.  Its clear that this lady was given a different treatment because of her beauty, she was immortalised in colour and oils.  This objectification and sexualisation is problematic to me.

Looking round, there is a stunning botanical drawing of Hibiscus and this was given the distinction of colour.  It obviously had value.

Breadfruit was 'discovered' on Cook's voyages and because of it's ability to thrive and supply food, it was exported across the colonies.  It became a symbol of slavery and oppression in many places.  This plant was used to make Bark cloth and this fabric was highly significant in Polynesian culture.  The knowledge of how to make it was lost for a time, because of Empire but efforts have been made to regain this knowledge.

One really interesting thing is three drawings by Tupaia, a Polynesian priest and navigator.  Two of the drawings appear very naïve, almost cartoon like but they clearly display a different viewpoint of the interactions, probably a more accurate one.  Those on the voyage viewed them as caricatures, but I think it is probably more they displayed uncomfortable truths.

As a navigator, Tupaia created an incredible map of the islands from his own knowledge in an attempt to help Cook.  It included all the native names of each island.  Cook did not really appreciate or understand the value of this map and the knowledge it contained.  He was determined to do it probably using his methods.  Looking at this map, I noticed in the middle a tiny depiction of a ship, so fine and detailed, I had to use my phone to photograph it and zoom in.  Looking at the map, it is clear the caricatures were fun and he was an incredibly sophisticated and skilled man.

He was actually forgotten and his pictures and map were unattributed, until research uncovered his role and connected him directly to a picture.  From there, it was possible to attribute the rest of his work to him.

We so often forget those individuals on one side of these interactions.  I grew up knowing the names Raleigh, Drake, Nelson, Scott and Cook.  We write them out of the story when it was their land.  Even Mai is a name I had never heard till recently.  Mai had been displaced from his home island, because this society had it's own history and disputes.  He hoped to engage British assistance by coming here, in order to regain his home.  People expected a savage but they couldn't deny his sophistication or charm.  He didn't gain the support he wanted but he was able to return with resources, although he did not enjoy a long life.

The arrival of the British brought disease and exposure to good and bad cultural ideas.  There was a lack of choice for these people in this.  There was violence and exploitation.  Many things were gifted but many were also stolen.  The ships left with more than they gave.  These interactions were often unkind and exploitative.

The final film, In Pursuit of Venus by Lisa Reihana really makes this clear.  It is an uncomfortable watch.  A long curved screen features a loop of film that moves from right to left.  The landscape of the islands was idealised as a beautiful paradise and famously reproduced as a popular wallpaper.  This landscape is reproduced in the style of the wallpaper as the beautiful backdrop of the film.  

The figures are superimposed on top and are real actors.  Different groups move across the screen and the sound may highlight the interactions of one group or another.  Multiple groups would be on screen at a time.  Initially, there are no westerners and the people are going about their business, doing their dances, practicing fighting, talking...  but then we see sailors and to begin with, things seem kind of OK.  Then there starts to be cultural misunderstandings, the threat of violence.  Some of the interactions are very troubling and difficult to watch.  They are sanitised, blood-less...  but it is clear what is happening.  The exploitation of women is not explicit, but it is there.  I think as a society, we try and ignore that, somehow, violence between men is easier.

I didn't spend any time in the gallery with history of Plymouth from this time as I had visited this a lot on the previous visit.  I did however give the maps a better look.  The death of Cook is implicit rather than explicit in the exhibition.  It features in the film In Pursuit of Venus but it also shows in the maps, the path of the voyage turns to a dashed line after his death.

One of his ships was taken and he tried to kidnap a chief to leverage it's return.  Things turned violent and he was killed.  As a worthy adversary, it was respectful to dismember him and have different pieces given to different chiefs.  When part of Cook was gifted to the British delegation, it was not seen as a sign of respect but greeted with horror.

I certainly never heard the story of his death before.  I guess it does not play in to the illustrious beautiful version of empire.  It's clear, so much has happened in the name of the British that was not widely spoken of at home.  I hope it is better taught in school these days.  It is important.  It serves nothing to brush it all under the carpet.

One nice touch was the display in the window in the cafe.  This was not there on my last visit.  As part of the tour of Journeys with Mai, different creative youth groups associated with each museum had made gifts for Mai, as a sign of respect for both him and his culture.  They had the opportunity to learn about some of the crafts Mai would have been familiar with as part of this.  I hope these gifts will travel with him or return ot his homeland or something and not just languish in a British museum.