I’LL SING FOR YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE (HYMNS)
video
(2020)
video
(2020)
I’ll sing for you when you leave (hymns) is an ode to those that leaves us.
Through a wondering in the deepest parts of the Bassa countryside of Cameroon, Lobe or the Bimbia Slave trade site, this video explores the im/materiality of landscapes and its spiritual components, and interrogates family ties and rituals during the burial of a love one. Maybe, when someone dies, they start growing again as trees or waterfalls in abundance.
Two-Channel Video.
Word from the artist:
“August 2014.
I went to Cameroon to bury a member of my family in my mother's native village. I decided to document this mourning, from Ngobilo to Bimbia, where the remains of an old slave port reside.
By filming my wanderings in the forest - where my ancestors are buried - the waterfalls and the beaches bordering the Atlantic, as well as the choir of the village singing 'Ligwe Li Yesu / Malo ma Bakeke' (translated from the Bassa language by 'The Birth of Jesus / The arrival of the Three Kings'), I noted the funeral rites and wondered about my position and my experiences during this period of mourning.
By finding these images again and editing them during lockdown, I began to put words and thoughts around these landscapes.
I began to tell of a funeral march made of burial and the absence of burials, made of aquamations, made of cuts... made of singing ancestors in the forms of trees and regenerating waters." - Anna Tje
Through a wondering in the deepest parts of the Bassa countryside of Cameroon, Lobe or the Bimbia Slave trade site, this video explores the im/materiality of landscapes and its spiritual components, and interrogates family ties and rituals during the burial of a love one. Maybe, when someone dies, they start growing again as trees or waterfalls in abundance.
Two-Channel Video.
Word from the artist:
“August 2014.
I went to Cameroon to bury a member of my family in my mother's native village. I decided to document this mourning, from Ngobilo to Bimbia, where the remains of an old slave port reside.
By filming my wanderings in the forest - where my ancestors are buried - the waterfalls and the beaches bordering the Atlantic, as well as the choir of the village singing 'Ligwe Li Yesu / Malo ma Bakeke' (translated from the Bassa language by 'The Birth of Jesus / The arrival of the Three Kings'), I noted the funeral rites and wondered about my position and my experiences during this period of mourning.
By finding these images again and editing them during lockdown, I began to put words and thoughts around these landscapes.
I began to tell of a funeral march made of burial and the absence of burials, made of aquamations, made of cuts... made of singing ancestors in the forms of trees and regenerating waters." - Anna Tje
