A PROCESSIONAL WORK THAT HONOURS BITTER PLANTS, FORGOTTEN MIDWIVES AND UNLICENSED FEMALE PRACTITIONERS
In BITTER WALK WIND SING the Midwife’s Herball becomes an Ambulatory Library that journeys to lands-edge in Ostend to sing itself into the winds of the North Sea. There, carried on windstream, it will blow across the ocean and into the Bay of Luanda, into the Bay of Bahia, and into Table Bay. The Midwife’s Herball will sweep as wind up over Signal Hill to disturb the fijnbos before blowing down the streets of Cape Town and into the narrowed windows of the slave lodge.
Comprising twenty-one embroidered banners, the Midwife’s Herball is accompanied by the Journeywomen and Travelbreath. Viatrix (Mariske Broeckmeyer) performs bittersong into the wind at the end of the breakwater.
BITTER is a message, a sign to be recognized. Bitter plants are medicinal. Abortive, emmenagogue and contraceptive plants are frequently bitter.
BITTER speaks too of histories of subjugation and repression of women and control of their fertility.
The work is an iteration of Nothing of Importance Occurred: Recuperating a Herball for a 17th century Enslaved Angolan Midwife at the Cape.