Malahierba is an interactive installation originally set in front of my garden in Kumasi, Ghana in 2022. The garden was created with the intention of making a space in which ideas, materials and interactions could manifest. The concept of the garden is derived from my Aunt Ena’s extensive garden and nursery in and around the family home in Mandeville, Jamaica.

The core of the installation is made up of traditional sleeping mats, local instruments, games, edible leaves and tea. Included in the installation was a sound installation reciting my poem Malahierba, participants wearing brightly colored screen-printed t-shirts with hand drawn names and images of different vegetables and medicinal plants known as weeds; a booklet with their historical, nutritional and medicinal value, and a questionnaire for the participants regarding their relationship to plants.

It was the first in a series of three convivial MFA exhibitions including The Three Sisters and Asking the Plants in notable unfinished buildings on the university campus of KNUST in Kumasi;

including the former President John Kufuor’s presidential memorial library. Another rendition was installed in the garden of the Goethe-Institut in Salvador, Brazil in 2023. These installations will continue to be re-created in various spaces around the world. Each time allowing it to manifest in different ways contingent on the environment and culture in which it is activated.

Manifesting interactions through touch, smell, taste, visuals, and sounds, the work intends to provoke conversations of game playing, music, traditional cooking and family histories between participants. Suggesting that perhaps these exchanges could manifest avenues that transcend effects of colonialism and capitalism, moving us towards a more munificent society.