Sampler (A Personal Record). 2000.Transfer print on satin, hand embroidery on linen. 17 1/2 x 43 3/4 in. (44.5 x 116.2 cm)

Tableau des Principaux Peuples de L’Afrique 1797-1798

A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad

When nine years old or thereabouts, while
looking at the map of Africa of the time
and putting my finger on the black space
then representing the unsolved mystery of
that continent, I said to myself: “When I
grow up I shall go there.” And after a
quarter of a century I did go there:
there being the region of Stanley Falls,
which in 1868 was the blankest of blank
spaces on the Earth’s figured surface.