Tate Liverpool
As part of the Trajet Ngamba project, this performance transforms the body into a 'living archive' focused on ancestral rituals. By enacting these rituals in public space, the artist demonstrates that ancestral wisdom resides not in written records but in physical gestures and the body itself. The artist’s work often involves anointing herself with materials like palm oil, sandstone, and red pigment extracted from 'Tukula' wood. She views the substances used in ancestral rituals not just as artistic media, but as a sophisticated "technology" for transmitting knowledge across generations.
The Liverpool performance was specifically inspired by the Kikumbi ritual, an ancestral fertility practice from the Kingdom of Kongo. Kikumbi is more than a spiritual event; it’s a profound social knowledge system that initiates young women into essential family and social structures. Ngamba integrated this ancestral tradition into a transnational context by posing in a suit of a successful business women while at the same time covering her body with a mixture of palm oil and sandstone—specifically, sandstone used in the construction of the Liverpool Cathedral. Sandstone was chosen as a foundational material of Liverpool's geology, architecture, and colonial history. Palm oil functions as a dual signifier. It is both a sacred ritual balm for protection and blessings (used on babies' spines) and a violent colonial commodity that historically connects the city to the Congo.
During the performance, the artist embraced members of the public. This gesture signified the historic Congolese entanglement with Liverpool while simultaneously proposing a. symbiotic future interaction with the city's citizens.
Photography by Ralph Dum
Video by Darren Brady
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