Kalebas, 2024

Sunbeams pierce the leafy canopy of a densely forested area. In a tangle of foliage, we can distinguish viper’s bugloss, coffee plants and elephant’s ear. The photo installation of Michelle Piergoelam (1997, Netherlands) brings us to Brownsberg, Suriname. A shaman slices off pieces of bark and examines the flora in the overgrown land where plantations once stood. Enslaved people possessed an exhaustive knowledge of plants. By using that knowledge as a weapon, some of them managed to poison their oppressors. It is this deeply rooted knowledge of plants that enabled enslaved people to escape the brutal conditions on the plantations and to survive in the dense rainforest of Suriname.