Philisa: WE Have No POWER To Weep

Lhola Amira’s practice is about the deep wounds colonisation is responsible for on so many levels around the world. Coloured beaded curtains float above a ceremonial salt bed, surrounded by golden pillars with a flame and water pitchers. Amira creates poetic spaces that instigate healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual. They are portals for remembrance and resurrection where you can listen to the soft singing of memory.

The sound piece Philisa: WE Have No POWER To Weep (2021) plays spoken word poetry by the American author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou (1928–2014). Angelou made an adaptation of We Wear The Mask, a poem by American author Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), the first African-American poet to gain national recognition.