Nzinga Bandida is an Ivorian-French multidisciplinary artist based in Abidjan. Her work aims at exploring black femininity through multiple disciplines and she is always looking to master new mediums that will serve as the canvas for her artistic expression.
We asked Nzinga to create a series of collages that celebrate the fullness of the African woman’s body. Collated under a series entitled Bandama, the five collages you see here also inspired ‘A body in liberty’ a poem written the artist.
A Body In Liberty
I remember that day, the dawn rising in the distance,
and this body,
Glad to have spent the night contorting
himself into joyous ecstasies,
Pleased to have spent the hours screaming
until his voice broke,
As if it was doing it for the first time, or the
last time.
Blessed to have the assurance of belonging
to oneself,
To know that no one will disturb its bliss,
Yes, here the pleasure is alienable.
To get up, to hear the birds singing, to feel
the morning dew,
and plunge still naked, smelling of sweat,
salt and sperm, into its ancestral river.
The Bandaman river never takes her
children, it was told one day.
So this body lets itself go, it is not in pain, it
is not afraid.
The rising sun illuminates its dark skin,
surrounded by the laughter of his sisters, his
mothers, his daughters,
It is not in pain, It is not afraid.
Mirror of its mirror, it sees itself in them:
Impressive curves of the back,
Noses as wide as their smiles,
Shoulders as broads as the thousand worlds
they carry within them,
like the thousand battles they have never
had to fight.
The Bandaman river never takes her
children, they used to say,
She irrigates them, waters them and makes
them bloom.
(Click images to enlarge for a full view)
