Cosmologies of the Heiresses (In the Weft of Memory / Procession I and Procession II / She Who Summons)

Cosmologies of the Heiresses (In the Weft of Memory / Procession I and Procession II / She Who Summons)

Mallory Lowe Mpoka's proposal comprises four works in dialogue, through which the artist approaches the image as an active space for the construction, shifting and transmission of identity. A Belgian-Cameroonian artist, Mpoka develops a multidisciplinary practice in which she never isolates photography, but constantly reconfigures it through weaving, material, and gesture, until it becomes an embodied and situated image.

For her, the purpose of an image is not to faithfully reproduce the past, but to activate it. Drawing on fragmentary family archives, orally transmitted stories and speculative projections, her practice questions how images contribute to the formation of the self, particularly in contexts characterized by colonial rupture, migration and the erasure of memories. The image thus becomes a place of passage: between generations, between bodies, and between intimate and collective history.

 
In In the Weft of Memory, photographs and self-portraits intertwine with the Jacquard weave, transforming the textile into a medium of matrilineal continuity. The photographic series Trilogia, produced subsequent to the artist's designation as the new matriarch of her family, explores the practice of weaving as a process of transmission between women. Meanwhile, the diptych Procession I and Procession II brings to light the silences of a fragmented history, that of the fierce war waged by colonial France against Cameroonian independence fighters in the Bamiléké region. By introducing visual disturbances such as beads, embroidery and weavings into archival photographs, Mpoka creates breaks in patterns that resonate with these historical silences.

Finally, the film She Who Summons offers a moving, invocatory image: a ritual dance between two women that turns the body into a medium of memory. Through this body of work, Mpoka deploys a conception of the image as living matter that is woven, fragmented, and performed. The ensemble thus reveals a shifting visual truth located at the intersection of the self, the body, and fragments of memory and history.

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Deltombe, T, Domergue, M, Tatsitsa, J (2011) Kamerun ! Une guerre cachée aux origines de la Françafrique, 1948-1971, Paris: Éditions La Découverte.

Enwezor, O (2006) Archive Fever - Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, New York: International Center of Photography.

ARTIST: Mallory Lowe Mpoka

PRESENTED BY OCCURRENCE, MONTREAL, CANADA

Born 1996 in Montreal, Canada.

Lives and works in Montreal, Canada.

Mallory Lowe Mpoka is a Belgian-Cameroonian artist whose work explores the connections between identity, memory and territory. Her multidisciplinary practice, between photography, weaving, sculpture and installation, reactivates family archives and memorabilia at the intersection of multiple geographies and memories. Mpoka's work has been presented internationally at such venues as Villa Romana (Italy), the National Gallery of Canada and Savvy Contemporary (Germany). Her artist's book Architecture of the Self: What Lives Within Us was published in winter 2024. Nominated for the Malick Sidibé Prize (2022) and the New Generation Photography Award (2025), she presented a solo exhibition at Fonderie Darling for the Momenta Biennale 2025.

CURATOR:  Nadine Hounkpatin

Born 1975 in Bohicon, Benin.

Lives and works between Europe, Africa and within the African diaspora

Nadine Hounkpatin is an arts and cultural consultant and curator. Her practice takes a critical, transcultural approach to how artists revisit memory and historical narratives, opening up new aesthetic and political possibilities. She co-founded the platform TheArtMomentum and curated the traveling exhibition Memoria: récits d'une autre Histoire. She works to increase the visibility of Black artists, while creating spaces to reflect on questions of transmission, representation and dominant narratives. Curator of the Prix Découverte at the 2026 Rencontres d'Arles, her work engages with political questions and focuses on new forms of visual expression and emerging contemporary art.