By Taiye Idahor

** Manthia Diawara: …What does departure mean to you?
Édouard Glissant: It’s the moment when one consents not to be a
single being and attempts to be many beings at the same time.

‘Hairvolution’ began as a result of a simple but important question that I have been asked since I was a child, Is this your hair? In return, this perennial question about my long, black wavy hair has elicited a journey of self discovery setting off from my family history. The process started with a series of meetings and conversations with my father and mother asking questions about Ayie, my paternal grandmother– a Caucasian– from whom undoubtedly the characteristics of my hair seems to have originated.

I only had the opportunity of meeting one of my four grandparents,– my maternal grandmother– and there exists photographical evidences of the other three in the living room of our family house in Benin City Nigeria. In addition I grew up hearing stories about them from family members who met and knew them consequently validating their existence. However, this is not the case with Ayie. No trace of her existence can be found in our home. The questions which therefore come to my mind include: What was her full name? Where was she from? Where did she go? Why did she leave? I asked my father these questions yet her identity continues to remain elusive.

My hair is a signifier of Ayie’s presence hence it is my path of navigation on this journey and simultaneously it heralds her
reintegration. My father believes she reincarnated through me so I employ this concept of reincarnation, of being multiple; a belief strongly held within my Benin culture to subsume her. At the same time, my quest for self-existence begins here, an unconscious reaction to Ayie’s disappearance to create a memory of myself through the act of repeating my portrait.

Through ‘Hairvolution’, I began to explore the disconnect between memory and history, between truth and fiction, between the real and the imagined. Ayie’s lost identity and faded memories are represented through the partly hidden, washed and worn out portraits. They speak of her loss but at the same time her rebirth. The voids convey the uncertainty I encountered in the course of my search for Ayie and temporality looms through the use of paper, canvas, inkjet prints and drawings as they emphasize the fragility of memory in itself.

As I continue to reflect on the importance of my parent’s memories, its fragility becomes increasingly more apparent. I question our ability to recall or reproduce memories that will eventually form a larger whole for future personal and national archives because our dependence on social media and its gadgets disassociates us from the experiential aspect of building memories in our minds. Although they afford us the opportunity to document, record and share life’s events as they unfold, they have also made us complacent. In essence, experiential memory is becoming a disappearing influence in shaping tomorrow’s archives; as we are left with blank objects
and images void of essence and meaning.

A change of location or death is no longer a criterion for a disappearing history as is the case with Ayie. Toexist has become a
choice rather than a norm. A conscious need to exist beyond life must be employed to secure an archive for the future.
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** This exact was taken from a conversation between Manthia Diawara, filmmaker and cultural theorist Edouard Glissant, aboard the Queen Mary II enroute Southampton from New Yorkin august of
2009.
Édouard Glissant (21 September 1928– 3 February 2011) was a Martinican writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.