an inheritance / a threat / a haunting (2022)
To whom are our feelings of grief and rage – an affective register whose manifestations are both somatic and psychic, individually and collectively experienced, material and intangible in nature – truly legible and understood? In what ways must our rage – this feeling of violent, uncontrollable anger – be deliberately hidden, veiled, and choked down? In what ways can embracing this rage point us toward alternative courses of action, ones that create new possibilities for living even as they destroy that which no longer (and never did) serve us?
In 'an inheritance /a threat / a haunting’, Nnebe replicates the steps taken by enslaved Africans to create a powder derived from cassava (a naturally poisonous plant indigenous to South America) with which to poison 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 an (un)livability that persists in the wake of transatlantic slavery, as described by academic Christina Sharpe. 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
an inheritance / a threat / a haunting, as included in Burnt Sugar at Critical Distance, curated by francesca ekwuyasi (2024). Documentation by Toni Hafkenscheid.
an inheritance / a threat / a haunting, video installation and custom curtains, 2022
