Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro
I Go To Prepare A Place For You
Mixed media installation, 2021
The work marks the movement of Black women soldiers prisoners in Germany in WWI and WWII who became mothers and wet nurses for German families. Often they would carry the children of their kidnappers and their infants would be snatched at birth for economical exploitation and echoes today in colonial continuities. The work reflects on motherhood as revolt through complex lineage of trafficking, domestic service, joy, imperfections and archival transmissions. The yellow liquids inside the small bottles consist of the collected liquid residue of sheep’s wool used in childbirth by the artist’s great grandmother and grandmother during the occupation of Bitam (Gabon) by German troops. Each sample messages of words women were forced to speak during that occupation in 1890-1910’s. Glass jars are samples of containers used to collect milk of young mothers who appear in archival photographs often part of an underground system of trans-Atlantic movement and resistance.
Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro
I Go To Prepare A Place For You
Mixed media installation, 2021
The work marks the movement of Black women soldiers prisoners in Germany in WWI and WWII who became mothers and wet nurses for German families. Often they would carry the children of their kidnappers and their infants would be snatched at birth for economical exploitation and echoes today in colonial continuities. The work reflects on motherhood as revolt through complex lineage of trafficking, domestic service, joy, imperfections and archival transmissions. The yellow liquids inside the small bottles consist of the collected liquid residue of sheep’s wool used in childbirth by the artist’s great grandmother and grandmother during the occupation of Bitam (Gabon) by German troops. Each sample messages of words women were forced to speak during that occupation in 1890-1910’s. Glass jars are samples of containers used to collect milk of young mothers who appear in archival photographs often part of an underground system of trans-Atlantic movement and resistance.