Sankofa: Playing with My Ancestors
Installed at the 2024 Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF)
As Black and brown scholars, we are taught to leave our knowledge-making practices at the door. The suppression of our cultural knowledges and personal and collective histories within traditional academic research maintains Western, Eurocentric epistemological norms within the academy, thereby perpetuating dominant white masculinist perspectives as “neutral,” and the only standpoints from which legitimate knowledge can be produced (Collins, 2000). Scholars such as Eve Tuck, S.R. Toliver, Angela Figueiredo, and K. Wayne Wang, among many others, have put forth decolonial methods by which we can begin to value alternative ways of knowing. This project, in accordance with these methodologies, is an effort to reinscribe the people, culture, and history that most directly make up who I am and the work that I do.
These collages began with a day spent with my maternal Great Aunt Pat. Over lunch, I recorded an interview with her discussing our family's genealogy, which she was able to trace back to the generation after enslavement. She told me about where family members lived, what jobs they had, memories she had of them, and how they shaped her life. Toward the end of the conversation, my Aunt Pat began showing me photos she had of some of these family members. I took pictures of the photos using my phone, just as a way to keep "copies" for myself.
A week after our conversation, I looked back at the photos and realized I could make something with them. I started with a photo of my great grandmother, Pearl Sadler, isolating her image from the background and playing with it in the ways I usually do in my digital collaging practice. I reflected on what I'd learned about her personality, her life, things she liked, and what I thought we had in common as I worked on the piece. I continued this process using images of other ancestors, aiming to visually reflect what I thought they'd want their descendants to know about them. Through this ongoing series of digital collages, coupled with short vignettes incorporating theory, I reflect on what I’ve learned from family members who have transitioned — either directly, through familial traditions or cultural retention, genetically, spiritually, or otherwise.
Theoretically, this project is as an exploration of “Sankofa,” an Akan concept loosely meaning “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind." Tying together my thoughts about performative methods, Black feminist epistemology, embodied scholarship, culture, and futurity, among other ideas, this project embodies a number of topics I explore in my scholarship. Most importantly, it reflects what teachings I bring to my scholarship by way of my ancestors.
