In the courtyard of the former Palais de Justice in Dakar, Senegal, Tuli Mekondjo commanded the audience’s attention with her whistle and cowbell. Her face, which was curiously painted white, bore a piercing gaze. The shrill calls of Mekondjo’s whistle punctuated her steps as she raised her arms skyward—one holding a black feather, the other a weighty black bag. Around her neck hung the cowbell and gris-gris, which together created a haunting harmony with her movements. Each gesture was deliberate; the black feather, a talisman of protection and a symbol of a mystical world, rose and fell like a prayer, inviting the audience to follow her into a realm where the past and present collided.

We followed Mekondjo up the stairs of the old courthouse, attuned to the regular movements of her feather and the sound of her whistle. She guided us into a space where her video work, The Birthing of Saara Omulaule: Black Saara, was presented. Mekondjo’s performance and video addressed a mid-nineteenth century racist missionary song titled “Musta Saara,” which means “Black Saara” in Finnish. The song tells the story of Saara, a young, impoverished Black girl who falls gravely ill. Before her imminent death, Saara dedicates her life to Jesus and thus ascends to heaven. In her transition from life to death, Black Saara strangely becomes white, suggesting that only white Christians are destined to ascend to heaven. To reflect this racist religious doctrine, Mekondjo painted her face stark white in her performative embodiment of Black Saara.

Mekondjo was inspired to create this body of work after reading Kari Miettinen’s book, On the Way to Whiteness: Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965, which was published in 2005. In the book, Miettinen explores the unsettling narrative of Black Saara:

“Thus, black becomes white in heaven. But as only Christians go to Heaven, so they say, another metamorphosis must take place on earth. Saara must first become Christian before she can eventually become white. It is this first metamorphosis which is the main theme of this present research. In other words, what made the Ovambo convert to Lutheran Christianity during the period from 1910 to 1965?”11Kari Miettinen, On the Way to Whiteness: Christianization, Conflict and Change in Colonial Ovamboland, 1910–1965 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005).

This narrative prompted Mekondjo to question why her ancestors, the Aawambo (Ovambo) people of modern-day Namibia, embraced Christianity under colonial rule, often at the expense of eradicating indigenous ways of life.

In the video, Mekondjo also played Black Saara. Dressed in traditional, all-black missionary attire consisting of a flared skirt, long-sleeved jacket, and hat, she entered the Nakambale Mission Church in Namibia shaking a cowbell, much like she did at the start of her performance. Embodying Black Saara in real time, Mekondjo began dancing in unison with the Black Saara in the video. The interplay between live performance and video recording created a powerful dialogue between history and the present, grounding her artwork in a specific colonial past while suggesting its lingering impact in the present day. For example, we learned that the puppet resting on the back of her performance costume was a replica of one which is currently housed in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Looted and displayed as an inert object, the puppet in fact serves as a ritual artefact in Namibia, a means of knowledge transmission from one generation to the next.

The black bag that Mekondjo carried represented the burden of Namibia’s colonial history. She offered it to the audience, inviting them to carry the weight of this collective trauma, transforming the performance into a communal reckoning, emphasizing our shared responsibility to confront the enduring legacies of colonialism. In the concluding moments of the performance, Mekondjo distributed seeds and fruits from her pocket, leaving us with an earthy, bittersweet aftertaste. This gesture encapsulated this performance’s essence: an invitation to remember, to reclaim, and to transform history.

By invoking Black Saara through live performance and video, Mekondjo presented her in multiple mediums and timelines. In doing so, Mekondjo repositioned the Black Saara not as a victim but a powerful and active figure within Namibian history, capable of participating in and shaping her own narrative. Furthermore, by roping us, the audience, into the reshaping of a racist past, Mekondjo underscored that it takes a collective and ongoing effort to unravel the legacies of colonial trauma.