Mumbo Jumbo

And they called us devils too…” Mumbo Jumbo is a double entendre. As Westerners understand it, it refers to something ‘nonsensical’ or ‘devoid of any discernible meaning’. In the Vodun (Voodoo) religions, however, Mumbo Jumbo is the intermediary spirit which appeases troubled ancestral spirits. Pluralities of meaning, then, become the central focus of this exhibition. The many manifestations of the global Black diaspora present an opportunity to investigate pre-colonial spirituality and religious syncretism. I have come to understand race not as a physical fact, but as a ghostly system of power relations that produces certain gestures, moods, emotions and states of being. Considering pre-colonial spirituality in its primacy then, eschews Eurocentric definitions. And by situating ancestral and traditional spiritual practices in a contemporary context, I seek to visualise how an obscured past comes to bear on the present. These prints, paintings and video works are the product of embodying a heritage which precedes me at the junction of Western and non-Western visual and linguistic canons. The works in this show are in conversation with each other, where images and texts drawn from Classical antiquity, Afro-futurism and Catholic iconography are pulled apart and reconfigured on myriad surfaces. It is this appropriation of gesture and form that produces new processes of signification pointing outwardly towards infinite resistance and indelible Black agency. „Through the water arose Yemaya, mother of all Orishas.”