Sangoma

Liberation Poetics
Written By Caroline Lacoma

Photo and model: Caroline Lacoma.

Sangoma is self-portrait taken in my island, Guadeloupe. It centers healing as collective and personal, political and spiritual. Borrowing the title from the South African tradition of spiritual healers called "Sangoma," this piece reclaims the healing of the land by the placement of bananas on the head.

For decades, bananas have been a symbol of French colonial power in Guadeloupe, given the contamination of soils and water when the French government introduced a toxic chemical, which led many farmers to get cancer and eventually die.

In this piece, I reclaim this fruit as a symbol of fertility and life-giving force. Similarly, this piece engages in Africana Womanist discourses by subtly centering the matrilineal link. Indeed, the orange crocheted veil was made by my mother, and I'm wearing my sister's dress. These elements place the Caribbean female body and (hi)stories as a Sangoma, a portal of change and healing.

Caroline Lacoma

Caroline Lacoma (b. 1997, Guadeloupe) is a London-based self-taught visual artist and Workshop Facilitator whose work explores themes of transformation, rebirth, and the self as experienced by a Black woman. She uses fine art photography, moving image and mixed-media to document the rich inner life of the Black Self. At the core of her practice lies a desire to witness intimacy and interiority. She has been published by several international art publications, and has exhibited her work across London, notably at the Barbican Art Group Trust, The Black Cultural Centre. Her work is currently showing at the Firepit Art Gallery in North Greenwich.

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