Mother Tongue

In Mother Tongue, 2020, Jasmine Togo-Brisby films herself, her daughter and mother, alongside the dismantled remains of the Swedish ship, Don Juan. Built in 1857, historians have linked the vessel to human trafficking across Peru, Australia, China, and the Pacific Islands, before finally grounding in Deborah Bay, Kōpūtai Port Chalmers where it remains today.

Togo-Brisby draws awareness to the historical practice of ‘blackbirding’, the mass abduction of peoples from across the Pacific who were forced into exploitative and harsh labour conditions in lands far from their home countries. In her ancestral homeland of Vanuatu, commemorative reenactments of this practice are held, on which the artist ruminates: ‘The visual of a ship invokes fear and is used as a warning sign, as an act of remembrance, yearning for those who were taken, it is a practice of care, a plea to not forget a past that has not yet past.’

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