A group of heavily pregnant women lie in a circle on the museum’s carpeted floor, their eyes covered, blankets pulled over them. A shaman dressed in a Mexican fringed floral shawl, feather headdress and Masai garments beats a drum in a lurching rhythm, erupting now and then into spontaneous shrieks. A carpet strewn with orange cushions invites you to take a seat on the floor and bear witness to this, as you listen to the women’s testimonies of visions they have experienced during a trance, induced by the drum, during a shamanic journey to the “lower world”. They speak of seeing fawns, eagles and wolves, and swimming through honey. Some of them encounter their unborn children.
This isn’t a yummy-mummy group trying out some capitalist spin on an Indigenous spiritual practice – though, since we’re in the heart of Shoreditch, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was. What you are seeing is a film – shot in black and white, projected in an enveloping scale – by Grace Ndiritu, a shaman and artist. The 11-minute film is an edited snippet of a real, two-hour-long shamanic performance entitled Labour: Birth of a New Museum, which was led by Ndiritu at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum in 2022. Casting herself in the role of Tawa, the sun spirit of Hopi mythology, Ndiritu offers a welcome for her in utero audience, and a warning about the perils of the earth they’re about to enter.
