A Whisper Echoes Loudest

Nascent gestures; an ode to displaced ancestors (from Nusantara to the Kaap), 2023

2 channel HD video installation with bamboo woven basket, soil from Cabrogal Country, banana leaves, carpobrotus ('pigface') and incense.

"For many diasporic and continent based Southern Africans, our lineages carry a beautiful plurality. For some, whether one chooses to acknowledge or delve deeper with such heterogeneity beyond identity designations such as “Coloured,” is dependent on the experience of colonialism and its traumatic mechanisms to create dissonance. These same mechanisms employed globally by white supremacist rule, are starkly evident in my experiences within settler nation contexts of Australia and South Africa.

In Southern Africa, acknowledgment and pride of our Indigenous and Afro-Asian histories were at times heavily compromised because of classist and racist regimes that made it shameful to acknowledge a lineage tied to slavery. Furthermore, our experience of de-Africanisation, ethnocide, Apartheid and forced removals evoke memories of pain, loss and shame.

As a diasporic Southern African woman born and raised on stolen lands, the capacity to assimilate and forget feels impossible. I have spent a sustained period and continue to research and learn about the histories of my family and connection to place. It took time for me to look outwards across the Indian Ocean, and focus on Nusantara. After two recent months of research in Java, an abundance of discoveries continues to weave our complex and murky past to inform and empower connections within our present. Traces of their legacies shine, carried forth by exiled and enslaved bodies, from Islamic scholars, brightly painted houses and deleted ‘Malay’ words surface, spur excitement and the familiar. These connections across oceans of my ancestors wait patiently, somehow muted though distinctly audible. I revel in recognising their character through distant lands that have survived generations of silencing and violence.

Nascent gestures; an ode to displaced ancestors (from Nusantara to the Kaap) is an installation that hopes to honour, remember and pay respect to ancestors, and their resilience and memory through a portal of departure and arrival."

Nascent gestures; an ode to displaced ancestors (from Nusantara to the Kaap), was exhibited in A Whisper Echoes Loudest curated by Nikita Holcombe alongside artists Rosell Flatley, Carmen Glynn-Braun, Dennis Golding, Mehwish Iqbal, Shivanjani Lal, Nadia Refaei and Sha Sarwari.