A mother holds her child, her gaze steady and unyielding. The body, however, carries a different truth. One hand is incomplete, referencing the mutilations enacted during the rubber extraction era under colonial rule in the Congo, where the body itself became proof of production. The missing finger is not symbolic absence, but a record of what has been taken.

Her tongue bends inward, suggesting a voice shaped by suppression, yet not erased. What is held back is not emptiness, but knowledge, contained, protected.

The child she carries evokes Patrice Lumumba—a figure of resistance whose life was cut short through foreign intervention. Here, the child becomes both memory and continuation: a consciousness born within systems of extraction, yet not defined by them.

Through materials such as cowrie shells and gold, the work reconnects the body to histories of value that precede exploitation, where the body was not a resource, but a vessel of power.