Nafira Cane asked me to create a piece for the Dakar Biennial, African Memory 2022.  For this piece I invited her to perform her perception of African Memory in Lac Rose, because it has an aesthetic appeal that draws one into the performance body, it yields a strong connection to the Motherland.  Nafira worships the water, the sky, and the souls’ diaspora in the sacred pigmented womb. -Mia

 

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Time and gender are intertwined in this expression.  Time preceded humanity, but in the form of earth time, in which the planet was created from universal energy, in which living beings evolved nurtured and challenged by the natural rhythms of solar and moon cycles, tidal flows, wind and rain, drought and desert, and shifting geothermal actions.  The earth was feminine during this time – responsive, creative, diversifying, organic.  

 

The appearance of human inhabitants changed the planet.  Humans occupied it, bought and sold spaces that they called their own, and built structures and products that were unimaginable in the time that preceded them.  Some of what was created was imaginative and intelligent, beautiful and enhancing of life and humanity.  But too often during human time, the essence of the feminine was sacrificed and creation was destructive of the natural world, dominated by class and race and patriarchy, and based on a conceptualization that was divorced from soul and universal truth.  

 

In this context comes Nafira Kane, reclaiming the wisdom of the feminine, honoring it, immersing herself in it.  She begins by breaking from the time construct that drives the human world, floating instead in the natural time of the cosmos.  During this sequence, it can be hard to tell if she is living or if she has passed on to another realm of existence – perhaps the distinction between these states is not fundamentally real.  Similarly, her body during this segment is not fully visible – she is literally somewhat disembodied as she merges with the fluidity of the natural world.  What we do see of her, however, is beautiful, with sexuality expressive of the reproductive energy that is fundamental to the natural world.  

 

As the film progresses, the lakes’ algae turns red absorbing the high sun to create energy, and Nafira arises still semi-immersed, and engages in ritual movement that stirs the water and expresses the power of humanity in nature.  As the pigmented womb blooms, we see the early time of humanity, in which nature and its rhythms predominated and human expression harmonized with it. 

 

Ultimately Nafira returns to today’s world.  But in this sequence she retains her calm soulfulness and her natural beauty.  She sits comfortably in front of a flag, and talks quietly in Wolof and French about her perception of African memory.

-William