an inheritance / a threat / a haunting, video installation, print series, custom curtains, 2022
In 'an inheritance /a threat / a haunting’, Nnebe replicates the steps taken by enslaved Africans to transform cassava into a poison and weapon to be used against slave masters. Through this work, these steps are reimagined as a recipe passed down from generation to generation - a transmission from ancestors long gone - for how to assert one's subjectivity in the face of dehumanization. Turning to forgotten histories of resistance and refusal, the work acts as a meditation on Black rage, not as something to be choked down and repressed, but as a generative and liberatory form of affect.
Embracing the notion of a weapon hidden in plain sight, the video installation at once displays and preserves the secret of the intended poisoning. Similarly, the curtains in the neo-colonial home in which the exhibition took place speak to the invisible and exploited care labour that would have made such poisonings possible.
Key words: Black rage; trans-atlantic slave trade; the wake; poison; domestic labour; femininity; archives; Jamaica; resistance; food