Zina Saro-Wiwa
Sarogua Mourning

Sarogua Mourning

© Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary

Sarogua Mourning
Sarogua Mourning
ArtistNigerian, born 1976
CultureNigerian
Titles
  • Sarogua Mourning
Date2011
MediumSingle-channel video, sound
Dimensions11 minutes, 37 seconds

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Henry Nias Foundation, Joan Morgenstern, and Sara S. Morgan
Object number2021.65
Not on view

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Department
Photography
Description


“I did not cry for ten years after my father was killed,” Zina Saro-Wiwa writes of her inability to mourn her father, a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist who was executed by the military government in Nigeria. “I found his very public death difficult to mourn partly because his legacy and story belonged to the wider world and not to me, but also due to a profound dissatisfaction with the Western mourning rites.” In “Sarogua Mourning,” the artist took on the role of a professional mourner, shaving her head and attempting a truly heartfelt expression of mourning before her camera.



Provenance[Tiwani Contemporary, London]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.
Exhibition History“Crest and Trough,” Manhattan Bridge Projection, New York, June 4, 2015.

“As Tears Go By,” Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands, February 24–April 4, 2013.

“The Progress of Love,” The Pulitzer Foundation, St. Louis, November 16, 2012–April 20, 2013.

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, December 1, 2011–January 14, 2012.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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