Healing Ritual (2018), shows the journey a young black woman goes through during her womanhood. The film shows recognition of the young black woman who is conflicted with her identity. What determines my freedom? What withholds my freedom? Where is my safe place? How do I survive? The underlying questions that are the foundation of her everyday being.
With the use of conventional pieties in art I take what is deemed as normative and make it “unconventional” by implementing a piece of me in it. In the film two dresses are shown. The pattern of the dresses derives from the dashiki which is a piece of clothing that for me stands for the unity of the African diaspora. The dresses are also reminiscent to the sleeping gowns that the women in my family wear.
mel•i•ange is a mixture- a melange of things. It is difficult to specify the singularity of one self in terms of intersectionality. Her personality and life choices were determined by the patriarchy, regardless of race.
Through the languages that define me: Nederlands, Papiamentu and English.
Through spaces that define me: Kòrsou and Nederland, home and elsewhere.
Through the senses that define me: hearing, feeling and seeing.