Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
My work for the 21st Biennial seeks to trace history in a contemporary vision with what you have today as heritage, but which lack proper attention. The remains of the objects of the incident in Museu Nacional [Brazil’s National Museum] in 2018 and in the Memorial do Cemitério dos Pretos Novos [Newly-Arrived Slaves Memorial Museum] will be materials that I will use. It will not be a matter of making a copy of objects like in my other project Impossible Is Nothing, in this new approach. This will be a video. This video will be produced in collaboration with both museums. My interest in connecting museums lies in the difference in their stories. By juxtaposing both their stories I seek to bring out a unique discourse in heritage preservation in a contemporary language. The paintings and sculptures cannot attest to the emotion I had when I first visited the Memorial do Cemitério dos Pretos Novos [Newly-Arrived Slaves Memorial Museum] in Rio. It will be good to use video, as it allows the leaders of this space to speak about it, to impact more worlds regarding the safeguard of their heritage. I also try to show in my work that nowhere else in the world heritage is safe, as we recently watched in Paris’s Notre Dame. It is therefore important to fight daily for their protection.
During my stay in Brazil I realized that the traces of the stories of African diaspora and the historical relations between the ancient kingdom of Benin are our past, and our memory is based on our past. It is impossible to talk about Brazil's memory without mentioning Dahomey and Africa. By working on the Newly-Arrived Slaves Memorial Museum and the National Museum I think my approach to working on these topics already shows how I deal with them; it is the evolution of these subjects and how we treat them today that draws my attention.
When it comes to dealing with memory and heritage in an African context today, in my opinion, we must start from our identity with the universal. It is also important not to fall into the opposite truth. For example, the slave grave in Brazil differed from a slave grave in Amsterdam. While in Rio slaves were thrown into a ditch when they died, in Amsterdam a slave was buried in a church.