Matriarchs: Chlorophyll Printing Series
is an exploration of self through the tracing of maternal lines and relationships expressed through the delicate process of chlorophyll printing, a method of ‘alternative photography’ that uses an array of natural techniques which result in the developing or bleaching of images onto the surfaces of leaves through the interaction of chlorphyll and the UV rays of the sun.
The images used as the base of the chlorophyll prints are photographic offerings from various seeds and parts of mikowa, the family tree, found in the home or its extensions. The home has been chosen as the primary archival source in this body of work. As a continuation of the home or its extension as the archival source, I use Whatsapp chats with close members of the family, or those being interviewed on my ancestral mothers as a tool to gather knowledge and stories.
The first set of successful prints developed are of ancestral mothers, my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Rebecca Kalimina and Victoria Chona on my fathers side and Monica Lukwesa and Elizabeth Mwila on my mother’s side.
Rebecca Buumba Banji Kalimina (née Hikabonga)
Rebecca Buumba Banji Kalimina (née Hikabonga) was my father’s mother’s mother making her my great grandmother and the woman whose names I carry (Banji Buumba Rebecca Chona) She crossed over to ancestral homelands a year before I landed on this plane, so I didn’t get to meet her but feel so deeply connected to her spirit (as she’s a being in and of mine). I asked her grandchildren, my fathers siblings [and her daughters children] to describe her to me and it was quite special that both my uncle and aunt who were asked at separate times in separate spaces came up with almost identical answers. Which rings a truth. A gentle, tea loving woman who loved having people around for chats and hugs in mugs. Her love of tea surely filtered down to her children, especially my grandmother, and her children’s children’s (my father and his siblings)
children (me). My grandmother, her daughter, was incredibly passionate and punctual about her tea times, even throughout her Alzheimer’s. She forgot a lot, but not about tea. “Kamu leta nkapu” / Can you bring the cups was probably her grounding sentence rooted in a grounding feeling. So many connections. Tracing these matrilineal lines is such an electric process of discovery.
ABOVE
digitised anlogue photo of Rebecca Buumba Banji Kalimina (née Hikabonga). Found in the Chona Family Archive, Lusaka, Zambia
BELOW
Whatsapp chat archive about Rebecca Buumba Banji Kalimina (née Hikabonga).
