Ausstellung: "Liquid Archive" mit Jasmine Togo-Brisby

Chapter Two: Summer

What memories does water carry?

Based on her own family history, Jasmine Togo-Brisby develops a multi-layered examination of memory, colonial traces and healing in the exhibition Liquid Archive. The video work Mother Tongue (2020) creates an immersive spatial experience. The film shows the artist together with her mother and daughter on the wreck of the Don Juan - a ship associated with so-called blackbirding: the abduction of people from the Pacific region for indentured servitude on Australian sugar cane plantations.

These stories continue to have an effect for generations: in the body, on land and in the sea. The water appears as a "liquid archive" in which loss, resistance and care are inscribed. The photo series From Bones and Bellies (2021) expands this narrative. In the sea, the women's bodies become memorials to colonial violence and at the same time stand for resilience, survival and healing.

Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth generation Australian South Sea Islander artist with family roots on Ambae and Santo, Vanuatu. She now lives in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The exhibition was created in collaboration with the ARC Discovery Grant project Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific and the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.

The exhibition is part of the research and exhibition project "Knowing Plants. Ecologies of Memory and Practice" at the Global Heritage Lab of the University of Bonn.

Admission to P26: €4.50 / €2.50 (reduced) / free (students of the University of Bonn)

[ENGLISH]

Second Chapter: Summer

What memories does water hold?

The video work Mother Tongue (2020) shows the artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby together with her mother and daughter at the wreck of the Don Juan - a ship connected to so-called blackbirding: the abduction of Pacific Islanders and their indentured labor on sugar plantations in Australia. Across generations, these histories persist - in the body, the land and in the sea. There, the water becomes a "liquid archive" in which loss, resistance, and care are embedded.

Drawing on their own family history, the photo series From Bones and Bellies (2021) transforms the women's bodies into memorials to colonial violence while also bearing witness to resilience, survival, and healing.

The exhibition explores the ongoing legacy of a destructive form of Knowing Plants: the plantation system, which relied on the exploitation of plants, people, and ecosystems. Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander with roots in Ambae and Santo, Vanuatu. She lives and works in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The exhibition is part of the research-exhibition project "Knowing Plants. Ecologies of Memory and Practice" at the Global Heritage Lab, University of Bonn.