Terra Cognita Suis
22.5 x 15 cm | 2024 - 2025
Archival Pigment Print on Cotton Etching Rag
November 15th, 2024 - February 26th, 2025
Terra Cognita Suis is a performance in which the artist repeatedly assumes a physically strenuous position, balancing upside down whilst performing a salute. The inverted pose places the rigid, militaristic allegiance of the salute in tension with the instability and physical strain of performing it upside down, questioning the structures of authority, national identity, and political belonging that the gesture is intended to affirm.
The performance takes place between November 15, 2024 and February 26, 2025, marking the 140th anniversary of the Berlin Conference, during which Africa was partitioned amongst the colonial powers of the 19th century. The work draws attention to the continued presence of these borders and nation-states. The physicality of the inverted salute references the ongoing mental and bodily labour required to maintain and legitimise these inherited colonial-era political ideas.
At the centre of the work is the idea of the upside-down flag of a nation-state, 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.