Photo credit: Artist and Diana Larrea
From the artist statement: “A palimpsest for the tongue is an ongoing project by Nigerian-Canadian visual artist Kosisochukwu Nnebe that uses the process of chlorophyll printing to transform banana leaves into material archives. The ephemeral nature of the prints - created by the sun and the plant’s process of photosynthesis - creates a palimpsest reflecting human intervention on plant life.
With a focus on what the history and migration of the banana reveals about Blackness and racial capitalism, the archival documents demonstrate how the banana, in the words of Françoise Vergès, “takes us to colonial slavery, capitalism, military coup, racial environmental politics, gender, sexuality, freedom, multinationals and the fabrication of poverty, precarious and fragile lives in the 21st century.”
And yet, with the images 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 - A palimpsest for the tongue foregrounds the intimate, embodied and subversive knowledge of the plant that people of African descent have cultivated for centuries. In so doing, it offers the possibility of more nuanced understandings of the plant’s role from non-dominant perspectives.”
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.
The artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.