NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE OCCURRED

WENDY MORRIS

Wendy Morris

Nothing of Importance Occurred

Recuperating a Herball for a 17th century Angolan midwife at the Cape

A project of recuperation of missing narratives at the Cape through artistic research, speculative investigation and transversal encounters

Nothing of Importance Occurred has as a focus on retrieving a library of plant-medicinal knowledge that might have informed enslaved ancestor, Maaij Claesje of Angola, midwife in the Company Slave Lodge in Cape Town. The project follows streams of contraceptive plant knowledge that flowed to the Cape through the bodies of enslaved women from Angola, Moçambique, and Madagascar, and from India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, as well as through the bodies of women emigrating from the Netherlands, and Huguenots fleeing France. The investigation traces practices already existent at the Cape in the healing ecologies of Khoi, Nama, and San women. Because upwards of four million Angolans were trafficked to the Americas, the project follows recorded practices among women there too.

The project manifests through collaborative Fieldguides, performative Travelogues and Processions, polyvocal Herballs, Plant Duets and Clandestine Radioworks, and a series of Returns.

Nothing of Importance Occurred is the initiative of Wendy Morris who works through the entities of The Company : the Wandering Womb, Orlando Preternaturalist, Muriel Emissary to the Past, I the Ear and !midwif.


Travelbreath

Intermediaries of the wind. TRAVELBREATH : Lois Brochez Lumonga & Stine Sampers. Photos by Wannes…

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Wind Sing

Viatrix sings the Midwife’s Herball into the Wind VIATRIX : Wen Hui Tsang. Photos by…

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Taste Bitter

Great Yellow Gentian (Gentian lutea) grows in the hills of the Pyrenees. The root of…

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Bitter Walk Wind Sing

A PROCESSIONAL WORK THAT HONOURS BITTER PLANTS, FORGOTTEN MIDWIVES AND UNLICENSED FEMALE PRACTITIONERS In BITTER WALK…

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The Return

We are picking a path northwards, along sandy tracks and mountain passes. This is an…

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Lost Volumes

Sixty stories will make up a set of Volumes, twelve in all. Lost Volumes, scattered…

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Exhibition

NO ONE WOULD HAVE BELIEVED – NIEMAND ZOU HEBBEN GELOOFD – PERSONNE N’AURAIT CRU HENRIQUE…

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