Finding comfort and kinship in our ancestors
Responding to ixwa blue by Thulani Rachia
“Thulani. I made contact with… I believe… one of your ancestors,” begins Condomblé High Priestess Iyá Adriana de Nanã in Thulani Rachia’s ixwa blue. Over the course of six minutes, I watch a story unfold of Adriana telling Rachia about a spiritual encounter she has witnessed through a series of voice notes. Adriana’s voice comes through in segments, translated and subtitled from Portuguese to English. She is speaking of an experience in which herself, her ancestor and Rachia’s ancestor have met. Adriana describes the appearance of Rachia’s ancestor to him; the spear he carries, his demeanour, and in particular the presence of “a kind of deep dark blue”. This is the Ixwa blue of the film’s title, namely Wadji, a material believed to build the astral nature of whatever it is applied to. Wadji is also the pigment that is spread across the screen by a knife through the course of the film, overlain by scenes of Brazilian colonial architecture. These elements come together to present a work that is about contact: between points in time, the living and the dead, modes of communication and crucially, between sites of colonialism.
For the deep blue of Wadji gives Adriana “a sense of welcoming” when she meets Rachia’s ancestor, one which makes her feel “as if we had been connected for a long time”. It is “as if we were distant next of kin”, she says. But I sense that Adriana does not mean kin in terms of blood heritage. She means kin in terms of a fellow feeling; a collective consciousness that stretches across a linear understanding of time and space. It is this collective consciousness which allows for Adriana and Rachia’s ancestors to stand together “as if they cared for and looked upon us”.
Moreover, this collective consciousness is not simply an ahistorical, universal collectivity. Although Rachia does not speak back to Adriana in ixwa blue, his response in the visual elements of the film emphasises how European colonialism is the target of this solidarity. The scenes of Brazilian colonial architecture are smothered by the Wadji pigment which overlays the film, transforming the way we understand the spaces which are being represented. The blue gets into the gritty chipped walls; it disrupts our sightline of the detailed archways and roof decor. If Adriana’s deep blue is a sign of solidarity between her and Rachia’s ancestors, then the visuals make it clear that this solidarity is in opposition to the structures of European colonialism which have produced the oppression they share. This solidarity may also be a source of liberation from the oppressive structures of European colonialism.
The question, then, is what liberation from European colonialism might look like. Rachia’s work stands out for its careful and nuanced way of imagining such a possibility. He draws on Fanonian ideas of decolonisation, which argue that the production of a truly independent identity and culture is made by examining the past, and reclaiming aspects of native history which have been suppressed during colonisation. These elements are used as a means to imagine and bring about a decolonised future. ixwa blue brings traditional practice in through Adriana’s spiritual encounters and the use of Wadji but these are not relics of the past; they are live traditions of the present, their importance and impact reinforced by their presence in this film. It is through these traditional practices that Adriana and Rachia are able to make a connection to the past, in order to imagine a new future.
Moreover, the decolonial future that Rachia posits is not one that hopes to forget about its colonial history. Coloniality persists through the images the film moves between - whether they are the shots of colonial architecture which permeate the first two thirds of the film, or the still of an illustration from the colonial era that the film fixes on near the end, its red outlines bleeding back into the blue. Adriana’s description of the encounter between her and Rachia’s ancestors is not necessarily speaking of a prior solidarity. In fact, it seems as if she is speaking, through her ancestors, of a solidarity to come. This point is only strengthened by the form of the film itself, as Rachia depends on digital technology in order to bring together the differing contexts of Brazil and South Africa in one piece of work. The future is precisely these points of connection which overlap and cross-fade into each other, demanding translation.
Yet despite the weight of history that ixwa blue is invested in, the future it suggests is one which brought comfort to me. I am comforted by the idea that Adriana and Rachia’s ancestors are able to meet and find an immediate resonance with each other. I am comforted that the future is not something to be feared, as it usually is, but one in which we may create something new from that which already exists. I am comforted by the idea that colonialism is not eternal but something that may be overcome. As ixwa blue segues towards scenes of trees blowing in the wind, I am comforted by the idea that Rachia is thinking about the cyclical nature of time, and the ways that solidarity is a feeling that persists through time and space to produce new, more equal futures.
