Ayahs & Amahs
Transcolonial Journeys
The Exhibition
Ayahs & Amahs: Transcolonial Journeys presents the stories, memories and histories of Indian, Chinese, and other Asian nursemaids who journeyed across the networks of the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our exhibition focuses upon the mobility of their lives and experiences, and of the representations and memories of these earliest global domestic workers. Their work of caring was vital to colonial and imperial projects. They helped shape the interconnected world we share today.
September 8, 2022 - December 31, 2023
The Galleries
Down Memory Lane
Sentimentality pervades these intimate family snaps of amahs and ayahs at home and on outings with the children they cared for. But these images are also open to more critical readings.
Photograph, Ted Hood, 1940 | Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd.
Moving Figures
From pages in storybooks, to recollections in memoirs and autobiographies, ayahs and amahs appeared in diverse art forms and visual media traversing continents and oceans.
'Nussiban, our ayah (nanny)', Oil on canvas, Gertrude Ellen Burrard, 1895 | Courtesy of the National Army Museum, London.
Ayahs and Amahs Making their Way
The journeys of the travelling ayahs and amahs took them far from their homes and familiar surroundings, and opened up a whole world of new sights, sounds, experiences and identities.
‘Passengers Aboard the Garonne in the West Indies’, Drawing, William Lionel Wylie, 1893 | Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.