On Rematriation
Rematriation is a powerful word used by Indigenous women to describe a “process of recovery and return that helps to restore the intimate relationship between Indigenous lands, bodies and heritage”*. For our final Lives of Objects: Online Gathering #4, Robin Gray will present this concept and tell us about its importance and impact within the context it originated from. This will be followed by a discussion from African perspectives on the roles of women in Indigenous knowledge production and transmission. Zambian journalist Samba Yonga will reflect on this concept from her experience as co-founder of the Women’s History Museum in Zambia. Ghanaian writer, filmmaker and art historian Nana Oforiatta Ayim will tell us about the work she's been doing on this topic and as founder of the ANO Institute for Arts and Knowledge. And Zambian artist Mwama Chikwmba will share her artistic engagement with ritual objects currently trapped in museums that are not meant to be seen or used by people other than the women that created and used them. How does the restitution of cultural heritage connect to other forms of repair, like the reclamation of land and Indigenous knowledge? And what might a woman-centred process of restitution entail?
*See Errant Journal #5, page 18.
BIOGRAPHIES
Mwamba Chikwemba is a self-taught multimedia visual artist based in Zambia whose painting practice features closely cropped portraits of women, often rendered in large format in acrylics. The subject matter, usually young women, emphasises pride and confidence. Mwamba's current body of work explores rituals and the self, navigating and Chikwemba, a member of the Bantu-speaking indigenous Bemba people of Zambia, has explored the idea of rituals and the traditional Imbusa teaching — an initiation rite that every Bemba woman must undergo before marriage — in her artworks.
Samba Yonga is an award-winning journalist, communications specialist and cultural curator based in Lusaka, Zambia. She is the co-founder of the
Women’s History Museum of Zambia, established in 2017 with the mandate to research and restore African indigenous narratives, knowledge and 'living histories' focused on women. Yonga explores how digital technology and AI intersects with indigenous cultural heritage management and preservation to facilitate the process of validation of indigenous artefacts and knowledge through restorative justice and repatriation to communities of origin.
Dr. Robin R. R. Gray is Ts'msyen from Lax Kw'alaams, BC, and Mikisew Cree from Fort Chipewyan, AB. She is an assistant professor of sociology and the special advisor on rematriation to the vice president and principal at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Gray’s work is concerned with Indigenous cultural heritage and has explored the politics of Indigeneity within settler colonial frameworks such as Canada, USA, New Zealand, and Australia.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, filmmaker, and art historian who lives and works in Accra, Ghana. She is the founder of the
ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge, through which she has pioneered a Pan-African cultural encyclopaedia, a mobile museums project, and curated Ghana’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She published her first novel The God Child with Bloomsbury in 2019, and with Penguin in German in 2021. She has made award- winning films for museums such as the Tate Modern, LACMA and The New Museum, and lectures a course on history and theory at the Architectural Association in London. She is currently special advisor to the Ghanaian Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture on Museums and Cultural Heritage.
Lives of Objects: Virtual Gatherings Curator
Sofia Lovegrove is a Portuguese-British independent researcher, curator, and heritage professional based in the Netherlands. Her research lies at the intersection of critical heritage and memory studies, with a focus on the colonial past, the role of representation in engendering narratives of belonging, and decolonial and reparative practices. She currently works at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, where she focuses on the topics of multiperspectivity, slavery past,colonial heritage and international cooperation. She is an alumni of TheMuseumsLab 2022 and a founding member of the collective
Disrupting & Reorienting Restitution.
Lives of Objects: Virtual Gatherings Moderator
Sherry Davis is an award-winning musician, filmmaker and curator with a passion for utilising the arts to inspire social justice. Her 2022 multi-disciplinary arts project
Ode to the Ancestors, commemorates the Black contribution to conservation and archaeology in East Africa. An exhibition of photographic archives that celebrates Kenyan heritage professionals from in and around the colonial period is on display at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in the UK until 3rd December 2023, and is touring Kenya with the National Museums of Kenya.
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