Kum: Soul of the Shadow 2021

Directed by Zina Saro-Wiwa

In the deeply meditative, 40-minute video triptych Kum: Soul of the Shadow (2021), we are confronted with a magnificent ancient Banyan tree that occupies a central place in an Ogoni village, around which the community gathers to make important decisions. The tree is named “Kum” by the people that live around it. Interacting with the tree is The Invisible Boy, a figure that appears in the works of Saro-Wiwa and represents a messenger between worldly dimensions. The work is a vision of the relationship between man and tree from an interdimensional spiritual lens. A place where the susurrations of the leaves and the singing of the birds take on a new meaning and where the human breath speaks and converses with the being of the tree. Together they suggest a winged angelic force and the revelation of a psycho-spiritual ecological system, forever at work, hidden in plain sight.