Lynching Tree (2013) is a color photograph mounted in a lightbox that depicts an old tree with thick, sprawling branches. The tree stands in a clearing littered with leaves and grass and is surrounded by bushes and scrawny saplings. Only the title of the image reveals the horror of this apparently pastoral scene. The tree was used as a gallows for enslaved Black people; the unmarked graves of victims lie beneath it.
McQueen took the photograph on the outskirts of New Orleans in 2012, at one of the filming locations for 12 Years a Slave (2013). In the film, Solomon Northup passes by the tree, knowing that he easily could have been one of the two young men whose murder he witnesses. In Lynching Tree, McQueen memorializes the lives and deaths of Black people in the antebellum South. Like many landscape paintings in the YCBA collection, the photograph simultaneously reveals and obscures the violence of British colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.
Tours meet in the Entrance Court.
Mti wa Lynching (2013) ni picha ya rangi iliyowekwa katika sanduku la mwanga ambayo inaonyesha mti wa zamani na matawi makubwa, makubwa. Mti huo unasimama katika eneo lenye majani na nyasi na umezungukwa na vichaka na vichaka vidogo vidogo. Kichwa tu cha picha hiyo kinafunua hofu ya mandhari hiyo inayoonekana kuwa ya uchungaji. Mti huo ulitumiwa kama mti wa kunyongwa kwa watu weusi waliotumwa; makaburi yasiyo na alama ya waathirika yapo chini yake. McQueen alichukua picha hiyo katika kitongoji cha New Orleans mwaka 2012, katika moja ya maeneo ya filamu ya 12 Years a Slave (2013). Katika filamu hiyo, Solomon Northup hupita karibu na mti huo, akijua kwamba kwa urahisi angeweza kuwa mmoja wa vijana wawili ambao alishuhudia mauaji yao. Katika Lynching Tree, McQueen anaadhimisha maisha na vifo vya watu weusi katika Kusini ya kabla ya vita. Kama picha nyingi za mandhari katika mkusanyiko wa YCBA, picha hiyo hufunua na kuficha wakati huo huo vurugu za ukoloni wa Uingereza na biashara ya watumwa ya kuvuka Atlantiki. Ziara hukutana katika Mahakama ya Mlango.