RETURN TO SENDER
PORTUGAL
But if we would speak the unspeakable, if we would name and say the source of our sorrow and scars, we would find a tender and a powerful company of others struggling as we do, and we would know we should show to the world, at last, that shame belongs with blame, not on the victim.
— June Jordan, Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams (1986)
Along the cliffs of Portugal’s longest shore in Caparica, and within the confines of Portugal’s traditional architecture, I contemplate rape as the central method for producing the West’s labor force and power as we know it today. Titled after the Black American saying, prayer, and hoodoo ritual, RETURN TO SENDER (PORTUGAL) is an ongoing multimedia project of self-portraits and ritual objects that begins at the starting point of the transatlantic slave trade.
As a sitter for these portraits, I situate my body within this history as a Black descendant of enslaved African people and a survivor of multiple sexual assaults. The images and ritual held within them returns the gaze, shame, and demands placed on Black rape survivors pulled into the undertow of the West’s legacy of violence. The mirror, sourced from Lisbon’s Alfama flea market— one of Europe’s earliest sites for slave auctions— forms an ocular shield and vessel. Under its veil, I hear myself, my ancestors, and the ocean speak. You cannot unmake rape, but you can undo the imposition of shame placed on its victims. This is the promise a return to sender.
Ritual objects in progress with glass artist and ceramicist, Marjani Hall, based in Lisbon, Portugal.
UNDERTOW I
SECOND SIGHT
UNDERTOW II
I AM THE HISTORY OF RAPE (JUNE JORDAN)
WHAT IS LEFT? (AFTER ASSATA SHAKUR)
HER HATREDS ARE MONUMENTAL (AFTER MORRISON)
SPLIT
MISBEGOTTEN DREAMS (AFTER JUNE JORDAN)
GOD’S GLORY (FOR RACHEL VIRGINIA)
RETURN TO SENDER