kosisochukwu nnebe

What does it mean to keep the ancestors alive through our work? Each vessel in this installation is linked to and named after specific individuals from the Southern United States, Jamaica and Haiti who made use of plant medicines to navigate the realities of life under slavery: cassava juice as poison; sugar apple seed to trigger abortions; and a medley of roots, seeds and stones as charms for protection.

These same organic materials are physically present in the glass sculptures shown in the gallery - if you pay enough attention, you can see the cassava juice curdling as it putrefies and catch the scent of whiskey and eleggua cologne meant to activate a charm. More than decoration, these scultpures are modeled after the pouches and vessels that were historically used by conjurers and healers to covertly disseminate concotions that could just as easily kill as heal - a form of knowledge that marked them as threats to the power and control of slave owners.

One of the vessels, 'A mackandal for Marie-Therese', speaks to the use of poison as a form of resistance in Haiti; the vessel is modeled after the paquets congos that Francois Makandal is alleged to have used as part of his poisoning plot, but contains a paste made out of sugar apple seeds that was used by enslaved women to trigger abortions. This speculative re-imagining lends itself to a gendered reading of the different ways in which the fight for (bodily) autonomy could have manifested.

As a way of honouring these ancestors and the embodied knowledge they carried while still respecting the need for secrecy and opacity, the sculptures are adorned in sequins and beads in the manner of Haitian voudou or libation bottles. These bottles, often dressed in bright colours and intricate patterns and present in the home, are intended as devotional altar pieces for particular loa, spirits, or – as in this case – ancestors.

At the opening of the exhibition, the works are activated through a libation, with the plant in which the libation was poured remaining in the gallery.

Key words: critical fabulation; poison; plant medecine; reproductive rights; protection charms; rootwork; libation; voodoo; african spritiaul traditions; syncretism.

the seeds we carry: mojo bag, 2024, glass, sequins, beads, putrefying cassava juice

the seeds we carry: a makandal for Marie-Therese, 2024, glass, sequins, beads, ready-made furniture, John Crow beads, sugar apple seeds paste,

the seeds we carry: ring jug, 2024, glass, sequins, beads, ready-made furniture, John Crow beads, elegua cologne, whiskey, loadstone, calabash seeds, graveyard dirt