Audio Composition, 2021
Included in the exhibition 'Rock Against Racism: Militant Entertainment 1976-82', When Aunty Speaks, You Listen was made during the Summer 2020, against the backdrop of worldwide Black Lives Matter uprisings. Drawing attention to the struggle for rights and racial justice that has spanned hundreds of years, often without recognition, this audio work is centred around an historic recording of Ghanaian author and academic Ama Ata Aidoo. Although her voice reaches the listener from the past, the subject – that Africa was impoverished by colonising forces that brutally plunder the continent for its own benefit – remains powerfully relevant. The fact that Aidoo’s words still feel so contemporary speaks of the depth and duration of Black liberation struggles.
When Aunty Speaks, You Listen, produced with funding from the De La Warr Pavilion