Body of Land: Ritual Manifestations

Working with digital images, objects and performative gestures, Sekai Machache’s Ritual Manifestations represents several stages of an imagined ritual. 

Initially, the artist is visited in a dream by The Oracle, who relays an important message. 

In A Silent Gifting, she is gifted with several objects to use in a ritual. Her series The III Aspects of She explores the idea that the human psyche, the soul, and the governing principles of the universe are split into three aspects with each aspect portrayed through a Black femme body guised in three symbolic colours that represent and challenge our perceptions of the divine.

The Black Aspect: Nyama Yake – A depiction of something of the material, the structure of the body

The White Aspect: Zamani – Ethereal, resolute and disembodied, a spirit, an apparition 

The Red Aspect: Mweya – The energy that animates the body.

Visually and conceptually drawing from pre-colonial African spiritual practices of divination and the role of spirit mediums as conduits to the spirit world, this new body of work is a culmination of years of exploration into the internal symbolism of the subtle body. As an artist, Sekai sees their practice as a form of self-initiation, a space to reclaim and reintegrate elements of inherited spiritual and philosophical knowledge.