Following our recent showcasing of the iconic AGOUDAS and NEGO FUGIDO visual chronicles by critically acclaimed photographer and PhD researcher Nicola Lo Calzo, through the landmark exhibition, THE LIVING ARCHIVES | MEMORIES BEYOND THE ATLANTIC, our curation now continues to unfold online.
Rendering you further access to the artist's celebrated KAM PROJECT, encompassing an exceptional body of work that navigates complex geographies, shaped by the histories of the transatlantic slave trade and the overarching legacy of imperial colonialism, we invite you to delve inside the earth shattering Series entitled: "TCHAMBA VODUN | IN REMEMBRANCE OF SLAVERY.
With this tantalising photographic works, Lo Calzo shepherds us, with immodest wit and bravery, through a compelling exploration of memory as a living, embodied, and political act of resistance.
In West Africa, slavery represents a past that is difficult to accept, both morally and socially. Memories of slavery have not disappeared, and they have been incorporated into narrative forms that are different from the official versions of history promoted by governments. There are family memories inscribed in the everyday lives of people that were directly or indirectly involved in slavery and the European slave trade.
In the Gulf of Guinea, along the coast of the Volta River in Ghana, from Togo to the westernmost region of Benin, the descendants of Mina and Ewé people, practice one of the lesser-known religions, yet at the same time constitutes one of he most comprehensive means of understanding the history of modern Africa and how the memory of slavery is safeguarded to this day: Tchamba vodun, also called Mami Tchamba.
Tchamba is the name of a spirit considered to be amongst the most powerful and dangerous in the region. It is the spirit of the slaves, men and women who were deported from the north to the southern coast as part of local domestic slavery systems and, more broadly, the Western trade of enslaved Africans. Its worship is the living expression of a historical consciousness of slavery among the local populations.
The photographic series presented here is the result of two journeys between 2011 and 2017 in Togo and Benin, and it explores the complexity of this vodun religion, which is a unique pratice that embodies the ambiguities of the memory of slavery and its multiple meanings within local society.
For the local populations, the word Tchamba is polysemic: above all, it refers to a geographical place, the village of Tchamba in the central region of Togo, from where – according to local oral accounts – most of the slaves were deported to the coastal region. It also refers to the ethnic group of the region, which, along with the Kabre, was among the main victims of the raids, wars and trafficking that haunted the territory under pressure from European powers.
In addition, Tchamba gives its name to the vodun religion and the spirit that governs it: it is the spirit without peace of a person who died in slavery who was abandoned and deprived of the proper funeral rites. The spirit comes back to the descendants of his or her former master to demand offerings and ceremonies in its honour, the only way to appease its worries and restore order, peace and prosperity within the family.
Historically, Tchamba vodun was shaped in a territory where domestic slavery and the West African slave co-existed during the nineteenth century. Indeed, the transoceanic phenomenon of the West African slave trade fed the local slave trade, which was managed by some wealthy African (and Afro-Brazilian) families in the coastal regions. Following Great Britain proclamation of the abolition of the legal slave trade in 1807, the increase in illegal trade was accompanied by a gradual reconversion of the economy into extensive palm cultivation and the development of a new mode of production: domestic slavery.
The Tchamba worship is, in most cases, associated with women amafleflewo ("bought person") intended for domestic work and work in the fields. Unlike men – the majority of whom were deported to the European embarkation points on the Slave Coast and successively shipped to the Americas (Middle Passage) – most of women stayed in the service of local African masters. They became their mistresses or wives, thus joining their master’s family's clan and giving rise to a new lineage.
The ceremony – which varies according to place, family and oracle – is the most elaborate and complex aesthetic moment in the life of the followers. Strangers, like myself, must first consult with the Tchamba spirit hosted in the convent to have permission to enter the temple, to speak with the followers, to take part in the ceremony and to take pictures. The flexible nature of vodun, which constantly takes shape in space-time without ever crystallising into a system of dogma and always integrates new elements, making each ceremony singular and unique.
Through a complex ritual, Tchamba vodun highlights the power relationship between former master and his slave. This relationship makes me think of the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave, of which the Tchamba religion seems to be create a powerful representation.
This staging is realised through two fundamental moments: sacrifice and trance. With the sacrifice, the practitioners offer Tchamba spirits the animals and the food necessary to obtain their favour. Kokou Atchinou, the Supreme Authority of Vodun in Togo, says: "Now that they have returned, we must respect them, honour them, so that they make life easier. At that time, the slaves ate the leftovers of the master's food. Today, it is the opposite. Now that they have become spirits, they are the first to be fed during sacrifices. We eat after them."
This symbolic reversal of the master-slave relationship also takes place in the case of trance, the psychophysical condition by which the followers are possessed by the spirits of slaves. In a mimetic relationship with the enslaved ancestor, the followers – descendants of the former masters – eat, talk, dress and behave according to the presumed customs of slaves owned by their families. The “savage” and “irrational” north is the imaginary or real place from which the slaves are supposed to originate. The follower, possessed by the spirit of Tchamba, yields to its will, lets himself or herself be guided by the spirit and submits to its orders. He or she becomes the "slave" and, in so doing, restores lost balance and harmony within the family.
In gaining this awareness of family history, the Tchamba followers reactivate the memory of slavery, share it and transmit it to future generations. They recognise a place for the spirit of the person who died enslaved in the family pantheon and in the community. Tchamba leaves the restless world of the forest and, at least during the time of the ceremony, finds peace at the family shrine, the meeting place between the visible and the invisible world, between past and present, between ancestors and descendants, between former masters and former slaves.
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