"Alima b'ê dê, Naviyu b ́ê dê" means, roughly translated to English, "soul has left, ship has sailed" in São Tomé e Príncipe national language, Forro. It is a verse sung in D’jambi, a syncretic ritual that combines spiritual and religious traditions from Angola, Benin, and Congo with Catholicism. This project delves into the rich cultural and social heritage of São Tome e Príncipe, an archipelago on Africa's western coast that has been crucial to the Portuguese slave trade since the 16th century up until its liberation and independence in 1975. Through D’jambi as a vector, or boundary object, this project explores the struggles of the forcefully enslaved people brought to the archipelago and their descendants, paying homage to the ancestors who were taken from their families and forced into slavery, but also how trauma and violence are individually and collectively healed in this ritual. Through photographs, videos, sound recordings, and interviews conducted in collaboration with local healers, anthropologists, writers and poets, the project aims to show the intensity of rhythms, the atmosphere, and the bodily movements that precipitate men, women, and children to become vehicles for spirits and ghosts wandering in the 'terreiro'. Ultimately, it is a profound meditation on life, death, body, spirit(s), and ghosts' importance as agents of restitution.
The project hence proposes three distinct readings of ghosts and hauntings: as spectral agents—or the return of the dead as spirits—that transcend fixed boundaries of time and space, possibly through ritual possession, disrupting dominant narratives of the past; as a rhetorical device for addressing colonial violence and its enduring legacies in the present, discussing notions of historical injustice and representation; and as an active process of ghosting concrete subjects, regarded as unworthy of social recognition, by disqualifying and dehumanizing them. This interdisciplinary dialogue between memory studies, cultural history, and postcolonial theories contributes to contemporary efforts of restitution and justice.
"Alima b'ê dê, Naviyu b e ‘ê dê" reaffirms the importance of art and culture as means of critical reflection and dialogue. The project’s relevance to themes of democracy is evidenced by its ability to connect historical events to contemporary issues of identity, memory, and resistance, thereby providing a space for contemplation and discussion about colonialism, loss, trauma and healing.
