evocations & lamentations.
evocations & lamentations (2016)
14:05 min
two-channel video installation,
projected across from each other.
*EARLY WORK*
The visualisation and vocalisation of the covert world of the Cape Verdean migrant also known as the silent immigrant, locally in Rotterdam. The aim of this project was to uncover the bridge between the community’s silence (their absence) and their ‘scripturally’ inaccessible Cape Verdean histories. The evocations & lamentations (2016) installation, consists of two channels exhibited across from each other. It visualises an intimate conversation between past and present, while facing the future.
The past is represented by Cape Verdean poets Ovídio Martins, Osvaldo Alcântara and Onésimo Silveira, who advocated and mobilized decolonial movements for the social and cultural autonomy of Cape Verde and were exiled for it. A few of them sought refuge in Rotterdam and all of them recorded their poetry at Morabeza Records, the first ever Cape Verdean record label which was set up in Rotterdam in 1965. These recordings were part of the cultural fight against the fascist and colonial Porutguese regime performed on Dutch soil.
The present is represented by the offspring of contemporary migrants, with poetry written and performed by Janilda Bartolomeu. This contemporary perspective stems from onbservations of first and second generation migrants (their (grand)parents) and their assimilatory practices built upon silence as a means of survival.
By reprising the past poet’s work for the present, a moment of contemplation is created in order assess the progress Cape Verdean descendants have or haven’t made in the wake of being exluded from their own scriptural histories. How were previous freedom movements successful and unsuccessful? And how to move forward from this? At last.