‘‘Mother Tongue’’, Jasmine TogoBrisby (DPAG)
‘‘Mother Tongue’’ is a mustsee, largescale, immersive digital video work by Australian South Sea Islander artist Jasmine TogoBrisby. The film shows three people — the artist, her mother Christina Togo, and the artist’s daughter, Eden Cassady — at Kaparukakau (Deborah Bay) in Koputai (Port Chalmers), Otepoti Dunedin. It begins with Eden Cassady pushing her mother and grandmother in a little white rowboat out from the shore. Shot entirely from above, the film tracks the progress of TogoBrisby and her mother as they row around the decaying skeleton of a ship, the Don Juan. Via the exhibition’s wall text, the viewer learns that this ship was involved in the kidnap and enslavement of TogoBrisby’s greatgreatgrandparents from Vanuatu to Queensland, Australia during the Pacific slave trade between 1863–1908.
TogoBrisby first became aware of the Don Juan in 2017 and subsequently made it the subject of her residency at Tautai Dunedin School of Art in 2019. The film is a response to the presence of the very ship responsible for the violence of her greatgreatgrandparent’s abduction and dislocation and its impact through the generations. As a way of confronting this traumatic event (with its ongoing manifestations), TogoBrisby and her mother undertake a ritualistic blessing of and lament for their ancestors and other Australian South Sea Islanders kidnapped from their homes to work on the sugar plantations or homes of the wealthy in Queensland. The utterances voiced in the film are recordings of TogoBrisby’s mother speaking softly and sibilantly in tongues.