The “Trading Lies” project is a response to the Observatory Museum’s dioramas in Grahamstown. The dioramas depict the lifestyle of an 1820 Settlers family. With rooms that resemble an 1820 settler’s kitchen, bedroom, living room, study room and children’s’ playroom. These dioramas say nothing about their context, which is Xhosa populated Eastern Cape and surely there must have been contact with indigenous people. The inclusion of myself in the diorama is an interruption to the seemingly quiet settler life shown in the diorama. Even though the Museum still exist today as it did then, it is an island of history and a vacuum that keeps settler histories un-“contaminated”. It is also a project based on the exploration of identity and the intentions to contain and preserve it.