Terra Cognita Suis
November 15th, 2024 - February 26th, 2025
Terra Cognita Suis is a durational performance in which the artist repeatedly assumes a physically strenuous position, balancing upside down while performing a salute. The inverted gesture brings together the discipline of military allegiance with the instability of the body, questioning the structures of authority, national identity, and political belonging that the salute is used to affirm.The performance takes place from November 15, 2024 to February 26, 2025, exactly 140 years after the dates of the Berlin Conference. By marking the anniversary of the conference that formalised the colonial partition of Africa among colonial powers, the work draws attention to the continued presence of borders and nation-states produced through colonial division. The physical endurance required to maintain the inverted salute evokes the ongoing mental and bodily labour through which these inherited political structures are maintained and legitimised.
At the centre of the work is the image of an upside-down flag, conventionally recognised as a signal of distress. By saluting an inverted flag, Terra Cognita Suis turns a familiar gesture of allegiance into one of uncertainty and refusal, asking what it means to pledge loyalty to political structures whose boundaries were imposed through colonial violence.