THE ONE WITH THE MANES / AQUELA COM AS JUBAS
multimodal project
The one with the manes / Aquela com as jubas is a series of speculative fictions that explores a shared history of exodus and slavery between Morocco and Brazil. Bathing in Afrofuturism, reincarnation, intergenerational trauma, sirens, ocean, healing rituals, and spirits, the project stems from an archival dive in colonial history.
In the eighteenth century, the Portuguese who had colonized a city on the coast of Morocco which they named Mazagão (name of indigenous origin meaning the one with the manes), forced an exodus of two thousand people, Portuguese, servants and slaves of unknown origins to Brazil, to a city they named Nova Mazagão. The project explores this thread between Morocco and Brazil, countries with different histories but with common paradoxes in the past, present, and future, using science fiction as a prism. Memory and oral history open collective conversations about our relationship to time and to bending it.
One of the first iterations of the project is "Sab‘at ’Amwaj.” More information on the installation can be found here.