State of Emergency – Harakati za Mau Mau kwa Haki, Usawa na Ardhi Yetu is an ongoing documentary project in collaboration with Mau Mau war veterans and Kenyans who survived colonial atrocities. Through live re-enactments or ‘demonstrations’, a (re)visualisation of the struggle for independence from British colonial rule in the 1950s is created, showing past experiences in present days, with a future audience in mind. As most colonial archives have been deliberately destroyed, hidden or manipulated, the project seeks to shed light on the blind spots of history by creating new ‘imagined documents’ that fill the gaps in the historical archives.
State of Emergency weaves together fragmentary colonial archives, photographs of architectural and symbolic remains from the past, mass grave sites, demonstrations and testimonies of those who lived through and survived the war.
State of Emergency is a collaborative attempt at reconstructing and reimagining possible futures of reparation and reconciliation. With the collaboration of the National Museums of Kenya and Mau Mau War Veterans Association **members, the project provides a collective response to heal, without erasing, the still open wounds of colonial violence, creating a restorative tool that, through the medium of photography, tells the powerful the truth of those who lived through it.