SAROJINI LEWIS

photographs taken by Sandra Zegarra Patow

  “A sea of fire, Flames that were like seeds, Beans that were like flames.

Extraordinary, magenta, purple, hot pink, and a deep Bordeaux red.”

In this performance by Sarojini Lewis we see a mysterious apparition of a woman from Portugal, in the city of Fatima.

In 1556 the town was named after a Moorish princess and in 1917 a female figure appeared in an oracle to three children of sheep herders.

Lewis takes you into a ritual in which she creates a visual narrative with Kieviet Beans and combines Fatima's secrets with her own secrets: a Bean Confession.

Beans and religion have been linked for generations. Beans also symbolize poverty, in this performance the beans are linked to emotions surrounding secrets,

is an eating ritual also a moment to talk about the things we are ashamed of?

Why do we always talk about a Holy Bean?

The process of picking the beans in Yussef's garden and dreaming with the bean refers to our feelings and emotions surrounding eating rituals.

Title Searching Madame Jeanette

Length Video 6:30 min

City of Production Atafona in collaboration with Atafona Residency,
Julia Naidin and Fernando Codeco

Year of Production 2018

In the Performance in 2018 during the Echoes conference titled 'Fernanda Romero is searching for Madame Jeanette' is based on the name Madam Jeanette of a famous Brazilian prostitute inspired by a commonly consumed Caribbean chili with the same name.

In Salvador I spend several days in the city archives to find migration documents around the time of slavery up until the time of the start of indentured labour. Who where the women that migrated?

Could Madame Jeanette have been from Salvador and one of the women that escaped as a slave?

An imaginary story reappeared in my mind intermingled with my own family migration from India to Surinam.

The chili Madame Jeanette is consumed among the Indian community in Surinam and is popular in the Netherlands as well, a similar chili but slightly different in it's shape was picked from the gardens in Atafona.

The juice of the chili gives a feeling of burning on top of the skin, this element I combined with the idea of migratory past.

After migration of her ancestors in 1895 to Suriname and exported to the Netherlands, Madame Jeanette packet her suitcase in The Netherlands and went to grow in India where she believed the climate was more fruitful than in her country of birth. The video performance in Atafona is combined with a poetic text that I read during the performance of Echoes of the South Atlantic conference in Salvador.