I Am Because of You, Mother Earth

The death of my father brought me back to Bioko Island to reconnect with my family, my ancestry and the place from which my story began. I travelled there searching for belonging, but instead found a new understanding of the relationship between my body, the land and the generations that came before me.

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As a photographer and mixed-media artist, flowers have long been central to my practice. For years I thought about them primarily as symbols of beauty—cut flowers that became part of my visual language. Returning to Bioko changed that completely. I stopped seeing plants as objects and began understanding them as living beings with histories, migrations, spiritual significance and the power to connect communities across generations.

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The more I immersed myself in the rituals of the Bubi people, the more I realised that my work had never simply been about flowers. It had always been about our relationship with the earth.

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Reclaim and Rebirth grows from this transformation.

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The project explores ceremonies fundamental to the Bubi people of Bioko alongside elements of my mother's Bafia heritage in Cameroon. These traditions understand human life as inseparable from nature. Water, leaves, soil, rain, rivers and the sea are not merely elements of the environment—they are active participants in birth, healing, memory and belonging.

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The photographs explore Töparápará, the traditional blessing of a newborn using Tola leaves, whose crushed leaves produce a deep red pigment applied to the skin representing blood and. the mothers conection to the child. They also reference Bötói, fertility rituals, and ceremonies honouring ancestors. These practices remind us that our existence depends on those who came before us and on the land that continues to sustain us. Birth and death are not opposites but part of the same continuous cycle.

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Experiencing these rituals transformed my understanding of both my work and myself. I came to realise that I am not simply documenting the environment—I am part of it. My body carries water, minerals and inherited memory. Without the earth, there is no life. Without those before me, there is no me.

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The project now combines photography, moving image and sound, and continues to evolve alongside my own relationship with place and identity.

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At the same time, Reclaim and Rebirth challenges the colonial narratives that have long distorted African cultural and spiritual practices. Traditions that were once dismissed as primitive or misunderstood are presented here as sophisticated systems of knowledge that embody profound respect for the earth, community and human life.

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This work is ultimately about gratitude: gratitude for the people who carried me here, for the land that continues to sustain us, and for the understanding that we do not exist apart from nature.

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I am because of you.

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Mother Earth.