"Meditations on Memory" Havana Bienial, Cuba

In May 2015, I performed "Meditations on Memories" at the Havana Biennial in Cuba. The work is an ephemeral drawing project that explores identity and memory as transient, metaphysical conditions.

The project exists in dialogue with the chants of Abakuá, an Afro-Cuban religion rooted in Ibibio traditions. My goal was to evoke the sacred aesthetic and metaphysical kinship shared by the people of Cuba and my own people from the Cross River region of Nigeria. I created a contemporary "shrine of memory" for the Ibibio, Ejagham, and Efik ancestors who were brought to Cuba by force.

The work honors those protected by the spirit of Ekpe during the Middle Passage—those whose ancestral memories were erased only on the surface, but for whom the siren call of the Tanze (the sacred fish) and the roar of the leopard still resonate across the ocean. Ultimately, the drawing was intended to be erased or altered by others, serving as a metaphor for identity: a condition constantly reshaped and redefined by the tides of history.

-Victor Ekpuk