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Wash Me Clean Until I am whole Once Again, Live Performance, 2017

Performance summary: A human effigy is created from black soap. It is treated with camwood (Osun) - a powder used topically for skin care. After the sculpture is complete, The Artist lays with the body and kisses it. The weight of the affection flattens the effigy. Water is dowsed on the flattened body to restore and mend it. The water mends but erodes and weakens the body. It coagulates; the water causes the Osun to change phases and bleed. More water is retrieved to clean the stains and restore the body. The corrosion continues. The mending, the cleaning. The reparative gestures are repeated until there is nothing left of the original black body; only the creator among the excrements. The work was presented at the inaugural Lagos Biennial

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Wash Me Clean Until I Am Whole Once Again and its counterpart, Whole Again, are performances which explore concepts of love, ownership, service and surrender. Calling on a myriad of reference but most directly the Orisha Osun, the essence of the performance is an investigation on the complexity of mending and restoration particularly as it pertains to black pain. This is done thorough the literal sculpting and mending of, the ‘black body’. The artist uses water and basic sculpting tools to create an eﬃgy made of African Black Soap. Major considerations for the development of these works are anchored in object relation theory, particularly the work of Melanie Klein, and in ideas of reparations and desire.

African black soap, traditionally made of the ash of local plants and oils. In the materiality of the object, the metaphors, and the metonymic implications of the objects invoke a deeper meaning that extends beyond the literal actions taking place. Through the washing, mending, restoring, and, eventual, deterioration of the soap eﬃgy, the performance questions the nature of labour, love, care, and damage.