"White Skin, Black Kin: a Creole Conversation Piece" was part of the exhibition titled "White Skin, Black Kin: Speaking the Unspeakable" at the Barbados Museum in February-March 2004 as an intervention into the galleries and collections. It articulates Gardner's wider exploration of Barbadian history relating to gender and race in the domestic sphere, in particular, the suggestion that an intimate connection existed between the wives of the white planters and their black servants. By installing the work into the 19th C displays of fine art, furniture and ceramics at the Barbados Museum, it also challenges the role exhibition displays have in silencing aspects of our colonial history.
In introducing the 2004 exhibition, Director of the BMHS and Chair of the then National Art Gallery Committee Alissandra Cummins described that in the work:
"The parallels between the role of the artist in "storying individual memory" and that of the museum in "constructing collective identity" become clear. White Skin, Black Kin thus puts the individual in the lead role, offering suggestions and insinuating alternative views which make it possible for the audience to pursue their own truths and establish their own parameters in the gold-mine (or is it the minefield?) of memories that is the museum."
She also situates the works in larger contexts of national identity, stating:
"The insertion and juxtaposition of objects and images allude to, as well as re-invent, a complex national identity, embedded in a deliberate insistence on the invisibility and the absence of the "other". Barbadian national culture ("here" and "there") has primarily defined itself not only by what is, but - even more importantly - what it is not. This perception extends from the colonial convention of identifying as creole any individual - African or English - born in the island. But the shared identity implied in the name did not extend simply to a shared, but rather a mirrored experience - Black / White; Rich / Poor; Present / Absent. The artist has sought to reveal this denial and unveil a past which has remained voiceless, invisible in a national, political, gendered, sexualized and radicalized context."
