Notes on the paper (excerpts from processes of writing with Bibi Mkunde) 2023
Notes on writing (Excerpts from processes of writing with Bibi Mkunde) is a continual, intergenerational experiment that reconsiders and reimagines writing processes (and knowledge production). By exploring soot (produced from the kitchen space, and communal fires) as a non-verbal language and system of writing, the project proposes to provide an alternative to the existing and conventional scriptocentric and textocentric forms of writing. Here, I tease out the etymological connections between the idea of mark-making and that of writing, by collaborating with my mother and grandmother in 'making our mark' via processes of 'writing' together a paper. Through a series of experiments which consider the symbolic significance of materiality and explore how to extend its functionality beyond aesthetics; the paper we 'write' remains in an ongoing state of being 'revised', constantly transforming with each encounter.
Notes on Baking (A recipe for togetherness) 2023
Notes on baking (A recipe for togetherness) takes from Bibi Mkunde's baking practice, more specifically her most famous cake recipe, which forms part of her biography in the way that it ties to her history with domestic work during colonial Tanzania (then Tanganyika); but also in the way that she subverted that history by transforming her baking practice first into a means of survival, and later into an exercise of care and love, and a project of community building. Bibi's cake is made from a mixture of ingredients according to a recipe, but it is also made by the people who gather around it, by the flame that cooks it, and by the stories it tells- be they narratives shaped by centuries of agricultural labor, family histories, migration, and gentrification (of food); or the more symbolic ones, passing through various episodes of history while at the same time, entangling with our personal biographies. Bibi's cake is essentially a single bite of history, the present, memory, a fu
Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by COCA.
Rehema Chachage
Tanzania, the United Republic of
Rehema Chachage has an expanded practice which extends to her mother and grandmother through process-based research. Together, they create a ‘performative archive’ which untraditionally ‘collects’ and ‘organizes’ stories, practices, rituals and other oral traditions in different media; performance, photography, olfactory, video, essays and text, as well as physical installations. These have often explored the unearthing of history, space, and the body (how the body and the land remember) by using methods that employ storytelling, the matriline, alternative ways of doing and knowing, as well as other methodologies which are both embodied and instinctual.
In the past, they have focused on rituals that ‘othered bodies’ have employed as a means of molding, surviving, resisting, and subverting, and how resilience persists through (and despite) a history of erasure. Their collaborations have been exhibited extensively in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.