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Lambi

Kapwani Kiwanga
Lambi, 2019
Glass, Haitian sand, coloured glass and steel
Work: 15 x 110 x 120 cm

In Haiti, the conch (also called "lambi", the name of the mollusc) is used in rural areas as a trumpet to signal the beginning of a meeting of the community, as an alarm. This call through the shell as an instrument has a very strong symbol in Haiti, because it was used in particular during the slave rebellion led by Francis Mackandal in 1791. Indeed, Mackandal appealed to the African community in bondage through the conch, in order that they meet and free themselves. Their escape from their master's home was called marronage, and they themselves were nicknamed "brown niggers." In Port-au-Prince, The Unknown Brown Monument (1968) represents an insurgent black man who has freed himself from his slave status. He wears a broken chain at his foot, holds a knife-cutter's cutlass in his hand and blows into a conch to call for rebellion. This sculpture, symbol of freedom, is the work of the architect Haitian Albert Mangonès In 1989, the United Nations used it as the central motif of the postage stamp commemorating Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; Slavery and the slave trade are banned in all their forms. " He has also been featured on local Haitian stamps: This rebellion was a pioneering event of the Haitian revolution, which gave rise to many battles, and in particular the battle of Vertières, which was the last. It led to the independence of the French colony Santo Domingo in 1804, renamed Haiti, the first free black republic in the world. During the commemoration of the 214 years of this battle in 2017, the President of the Republic of Haiti notably evoked the Queen Conch during his speech: "The conch of concord, the union that is strength, sounded" . Therefore, today, in the imagination of Afro-descendants of the whole world, the conch is a symbol of freedom as the torch is for the Western world.