Maafa is a Swahili word meaning "disaster", used to name the historical pain of the African diaspora. Taking a tragic chapter in the African continent as a common thread, I approach the suicides of captives during the period of the slave trade, not as a sign of weakness, but as an act of insubordination and resistance to slave labor. To rebel on board slave ships against the physical and moral degradation suffered could mean a last decision taken as the owner of one's own life.
I approach, in a subjective way, the relationships between lives, deaths, and the forced voyages across the Atlantic. In Maafa, the ocean is represented as a passage into unknown territory, into a life of suffering, disconnected from one's roots. Many captives, faced with a future of forced labor and punishment, threw themselves into the sea in a vain attempt to return to their homeland or make contact with those who remained there.
