“Ndi nna nnanyi na ezuko maka na anyi zukoro / Imaaqai, suvulivut katittut katisimagannuk / The ancestors are meeting because we have met", video, 22:01, 2022
Ndi nna nnanyi na ezuko maka na anyi zukoro / Imaaqai, suvulivut katittut katisimagannuk / The ancestors are meeting because we have met" is a video performance piece that features a conversation between the artist and Katherine Takpannie, an Inuk artist, in their respective native languages: Igbo and Inuktitut.
Through their halting attempts to speak their mother tongue, the work evidences language as both a site of ongoing colonial violence and a potential space for healing and restitution.
Nnebe’s essay about the work and its theoretical underpinnings, published as part of the London School of Economics’ and the Vlaams Architectuurinstituut Disembodied Territories Project, can be found here: The Ancestors Are Meeting Because We Have Met.
Key words: Black and Indigenous futurities; anti-imperial solidarities; language; healing; coloniality; restituiton; ancestors; diaspora; settler-colonialism; imperialism; neo-colonialism