Free School

September 6, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

“A Possibility”, a multimedia installation addressing the system of mass incarceration in the United States in the context of historic struggles for human rights, was in “Free School”, the 2013 MFA Group Show at Gary Snyder Project Space, New York in May.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: a possibility, audio installation, Cornell MFA, cornell university, Exhibition, Gary Snyder Project Space, group show, Harriet Tubman, Mariamma Kambon, New York City, nkisi sarabanda, rebellion, resistance, slavery

A Possibility – multimedia installation

August 27, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

 A Possibility[i] [audio http://f.cl.ly/items/2d2S1G2L2p2q2C2O3e3o/SF21-NOF-compilation.mp3] After my visit to a state prison in North Carolina, the hollow, trapped eyes of the men in worn out prison uniforms stayed with me along with the miles and miles of chain-link fence, the layers of enclosure that separated them from the rest of life. I could have drowned in the bleakness of their interminable sentences and the withering boredom of their days had I not been able to resurrect a semblance of hope for a […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: a possibility, African Diaspora, audio installation, chain link, correctional institution, emancipation, Exhibition, Frederick Douglass, freedom, Gary Snyder Project Space, group show, Harriet Tubman, hope, incarceration, installation, Kongo, liberty, Mariamma Kambon, mass incarceration, Narratives of Freedom, Nat Turner, nkisi sarabanda, ogun, parabolic speaker, prison, rebellion, resistance, sarabanda, Seth Concklin, slavery, syncretism, syncretist, Yoruba

Narratives of Freedom: Chanting Down Babylon with Ancestral Voices

August 25, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

In April 2013, I followed my inspiration from reggae legend, Bob Marley, to “Chant Down Babylon.”[1] I had played the track countless times until the refrain Come we go chant down Babylon[2] one more time retrieved distinct images from the vault of my memories. Links began to form Music -> the Key Chant Down Babylon CHANT down Babylon Chant DOWN Babylon Chant DOWN BABYLON Communicating -> to Everyone I recalled my childhood neighbour, an elderly Shouter Baptist woman who spoke […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: audio installation, Bob Marley, chant down babylon, escape, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Narratives of Freedom, Nat Turner, rebellion, resistance, Seth Concklin, slavery, Underground Railroad

Strange Fruit 21st Century – a Multimedia Installation

August 20, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
 Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,   1939, a “progressive” New York City nightclub – the Café Society. Billie Holiday beneath a single spotlight. 
 Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
 Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.   The reality of American racism revealed naked and undeniable beneath that light, thrust into plain view by the force of unflinching words, profoundly interpreted by the legendary songstress with […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: enslavement, freedom, Harriet Tubman, Jim Crow, Liberation, lynching, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, photography, prison industrial complex, race-based oppression, resistance, segregation, slavery, strange fruit, The New Jim Crow

Finding Moses

July 26, 2013 by Mariamma Kambon

They were on the bank of a stream of some width, and apparently a deep and rapid one. The men were afraid to cross; there was no bridge and no boat; but like her great pattern, she went forward into the waters, and the men not knowing what else to do, followed… (Bradford) They called her Moses. Born Araminta Ross in the early 19th century, into the holds of slavery, Harriet Tubman would come to be known as a fearless liberator. […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: A Woman Called Moses, A.M.E. Zion Church, African Liberation, Auburn, emancipation, escape, finding moses, freedom, freedom fighter, gravesite, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Tubman Home, history, icon, Liberation, Moses, New York, photography, slavery