Workshop by Anguezomo Nzé Mboulou Mba Bikoro

27 JULY 2025 / 2 - 5:30 PM

Field Marshal Muthoni wa Kirima was one of many forest women who weaved the fabrics of the Mau Mau resistance movement against British settlers in Kenya, using sisal plants as forms of spiritual connection, routes for liberation and for marking the mass graves of murdered populations. Maria Felipe became a prominent female African leader in the anti-colonial liberation in Salvador-Bahia, organising troops of women to fight with botanical plants from the island of Itaparica around the 1830's. Today the sisal is one of the plants that remain a powerful tool for warding off predatorial spirits and for protection from unwanted attacks.

This workshop session offers embodied practice strategies in the navigation of predatory landscapes and behaviors through plant apothecary. Participants will be guided in creating oils and tinctures based on plants in the garden, which were used as anti-colonial defense tools in historical liberation movements in Brazil, Kenya, Senegal, Madagascar and the US and in times of resistance as wearable omens for self-preservation and positive affirmation. The potion oils serve as balancing the nervous system in care work and protest work. This weaves practices of botanical therapy, obeah ritual apothecary and psychotherapy in times of conflict, connected to training in paraecology practice. 

ANGUEZOMO NZÉ MBA BIKORO is a visual artist, writer, somatic body therapist, community cultural worker and curator supporting BIPOC and queer groups using integrative approaches that combines humanistic and abolitionist-inspired methods, de-traumatisation tools alongside cognitive behavioural therapy (notably for C-PTSD) and ancestral healing work. Their abolitionist approach is shaped through decolonial embodied practices and awareness of racism, discrimination and gender identity. Their practice honours queer histories and indigenous struggles centering Bakongo Cosmology, Obeah and Orixa practices that empowers communities and shares resources to create tools of safety towards self-awareness & transformation in mental health. Their works on herbalism and ancestral healing often exposes the interwoven colonial histories of migration and ecologies in site-specific spaces to dismantle prejudices and create independent emancipatory tools for liberation, education, and reparation.

TICKETS