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Like a palm tree POSTBOX GHANA
When night falls, three totemic silhouettes illuminate Atlantic’s window.
Their rounded heads, glowing with a red light, are demijohns from the Tokpa market, similar to those found along the roads of Benin: glass calabashes filled with contraband petrol, which allow drivers to refuel where many official gas stations no longer operate. These three motionless figures reference the power of fluids that enable the intense traffic flow along the West African coast, where languages, customs and resources are exchanged. In this installation for Atlantic, Postbox Ghana places the confluence of oil routes in Ouidah.
One oil can hide another; for behind this reference to motor oil lies a forest of palm trees, plants that produce a no less powerful essence: palm oil. Palm trees proliferate in a lush foliage on the back wall of the gallery, covered with photographic archives collected mainly from the Zinsou Foundation’s collections. This cornucopia from albums dating back to French colonisation bears witness both to the proliferation of palm groves in the region at the end of the 19th Century and to the Western fascination with this tree, which became a symbol of exoticism, a favourite ornament of seaside resorts and a producer of cheap oil for the food industry.
Yet palm oil undergoes far more complex transformations depending on times and uses. The three gleaming heads could have been other familiar artifacts — street lamps inherited from medieval Benin City, or jars of cooking oil. In the gallery space, these many forms of a fundamental seed diffuse and intertwine. The organic shape of the calabashes chime with a base of black soap made from palm kernel oil, a substance extracted from the kernel of oil palm fruits. It is a cousin of palm oil, which is derived from the pulp of the same fruit and has many uses in cooking, medicine and local rituals.
Through the transformations of the palm tree unfolding at Atlantic, we witness a living history that extends into intangible heritage. Postbox Ghana is a multidisciplinary collective whose mission is to document the visual and material culture of West African nations, revealing their collective memory through sensitive connections between archives, objects and ideas. Their research on cultural variations in palm oil thus go beyond images and artefacts: it will also be explored at the opening of the exhibition during a community meal hosted by chef and priestess Mirabelle Kounagbe Kuassiba, who will share her knowledge of local traditions related to this commodity.
Postbox Ghana’s work is to restore the materiality of archives in order to activate the full complexity of their imaginaries, beyond solely colonial, scientific, or theoretical perspectives. The three figures with calabash heads invite us to navigate this jungle of meanings, this depth of historical and cultural field, which can be revealed by the versatility of a raw resource such as palm oil.
- Marguerite Hennebelle
