
Nanci Amaka
Cleanse | Three Walls, 2017 - Ongoing
3 channel video with sound
Run time: 19:29
Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs
The series, Cleanse, was initially performed August 2nd 2017, at Ward Warehouse in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. It is the ritualistic cleaning, washing, and anointing of the aforementioned structure as a final...
The series, Cleanse, was initially performed August 2nd 2017, at Ward Warehouse in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. It is the ritualistic cleaning, washing, and anointing of the aforementioned structure as a final act of nurture before it was demolished. It is customary in many indigenous cultures – including my own Igbo culture – to wash and dress the body of the dead before they are buried. I lost my mother to violence as a young child. Sadly, her family did not get the chance to perform the final rites of washing her body before she was buried. Growing up, I was forbidden from speaking about her and my father destroyed all photographs of her. Most times, it was as if she never existed. I subsequently dealt with the pain of losing her and the absolute silence around her by practicing forgetting. Cleanse was performed as an act or reparation for this lifelong sorrow at the advent of my pregnancy. The promise of new life and a continued lineage necessitated engaging with the memory of my mother again. As I cleaned, I thought of my mother, begged her forgiveness for forgetting her, and prayed to negate intergenerational trauma for my future child. I consciously embodied physical calm while evoking and engaging with traumatic memories and simultaneously telling my child we were both safe. Psychologically time-traveling between the painful past and hopeful future while physically engaged in a present act of nurture on a doomed structure. In the process, my body became drenched in sweat. It felt as if it were also cleansing itself from the inside out.