Max Pinckers, STATE OF EMERGENCY. HARAKATI ZA MAU MAU KWA HAKI, USAWA NA ARDHI YETU, 2024

State of Emergency – Harakati za Mau Mau kwa Haki, Usawa na Ardhi Yetu (Mau Mau Movement for Justice, Equality and Our Land) is the result of a ten-year collaboration with Mau Mau freedom fighters and Kenyans who survived colonial atrocities. In the form of in-person reenactments, or ‘demonstrations’, together they (re) visualize the fight for independence from British colonial rule in the 1950s, manifesting their past experiences in the present with a future audience in mind. With most of the colonial archives deliberately destroyed, hidden or manipulated, this project attempts to shine a light on this history’s blind spots by creating new ‘imagined records’ that fill in the missing gaps of historical archives. State of Emergency interweaves fragmentary colonial archives, photographs of architectural and symbolic remnants from the past, mass grave sites, demonstrations and the testimonies of people who experienced and survived the war themselves. State of Emergency has led to the creation of an ecological initiative managed by the Mau Mau War Veterans Association, which aims to restore and rehabilitate ancestral forest land that has been exhausted by colonialists cutting down hardwood forests and planting exotic water-draining trees such as eucalyptus, cypress and pine. These forests were instrumental for the Mau Mau freedom fighters in their resistance to colonial violence land urgently needs to be replenished with indigenous vegetation to fight the disastrous effects of climate change. The long-term goal of State of Emergency is to provide access to larger institutional support, funding possibilities and partner organizations to create a sustainable future for the veteran communities and their children.