The Body Remembers The Earth
The Body Remembers the Earth emerged as I considered the idea of a shared memory or consciousness between ourselves and the land, and the ways we can attempt to access it.
Returning home to Uganda earlier this year made me more aware of this idea and forced me to consider what might happen if we cannot learn from the land. Perhaps that’s why we are so stagnant, why we are trapped in a cycle of extraction and exploitation across the continent, because we fail to pause and remember the stories of the earth.
The exhibition, therefore, asks what it might mean to move beyond simply remembering acts of violence and to actively attempt to repair damaged relationships. Healing, in this context, cannot be separated from the land. If the earth has been wounded through systems of dispossession, then caring for it becomes part of caring for ourselves and the communities that depend upon it. By recognising the earth as something we are connected to rather than something we possess, the exhibition proposes that healing the land can also become a form of collective healing.
Ultimately, this allows us to acknowledge the wounds of colonial history while creating the conditions to grow beyond them. Wahu-Mũchiri’s research demonstrates how landscapes carry political and ideological meanings, revealing that questions of land are inseparable from questions of power, history, and belonging. Mbembe’s work allows us to consider how the violence of colonialism continues to shape the present rather than existing only as a historical event.
The violence that occurs on land remains visible in its soil, ecosystems, borders, resources, and in the communities that continue to inhabit it. The body similarly becomes a site of accumulation, carrying histories that are inherited across generations. Land and body, therefore, mirror one another, both holding memories of what has been endured and what continues to shape the present. To sustainably grow and heal, we need to move past the nostalgic haze when considering our relationship to the earth. Instead, it asks how the memories held within land and body can help us imagine decolonial futures.
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