kosisochukwu nnebe

A palimpsest for the tongue, 2025, installation at Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2025), chlorophyll prints of archival photographs on banana leaves, acrylic, steel. Photo credit: Ben Yau

A Palimpsest for the Tongue originated in 2023 during a residency in Maroon Town, Jamaica. Through readings and conversations with local residents, Nnebe traced the fruit’s significance across multiple registers of Jamaican life: as a vital food source sustaining Maroon communities in their resistance to colonial forces, and as a commodity whose nineteenth-century commercialization bound the island’s fortunes to the volatile demands of global capital. To materialize these entangled histories, Nnebe employs chlorophyll printing—a photographic process in which archival images are transferred directly onto banana leaves using sunlight.

As an installation, the images are only discernable from underneath a canopy of leaves -  a recreation of Nnebe’s own memories of time spent in banana groves in Jamaica and Nigeria. This gesture foregrounds the intimate, embodied, and often subversive knowledge of the plant cultivated by people of African descent over centuries. In doing so, the work opens space for more nuanced understandings of the banana’s significance from non-dominant perspectives.

A palimpsest for the tongue, 2025, chlorophyll prints of archival photographs on banana leaves, light, acrylic, 22 x 21 x 5 cm.

This piece was created as a first prototype for a larger installation. The artist would like to thank the Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) in Miami for providing the space to conduct further research and create this work.