Sasha Huber / Mami Wata

“I am originally from Zurich, and I’ve lived in Finland since twenty years now, and it is here that I started my artistic career during my studies. It is during those studies that I discovered the staple gun for myself, and immediately realised that it is like a weapon. The weight and sound, and the fact that I had to protect my ears, and eyes as well, reminded me very much of a weapon. I realised that I would like to use this when it somehow relates to this symbolic meaning.

I can discuss issues that I am interested about, and at the beginning, it was a lot about my mother’s heritage, or where my mother comes from, which is Haiti. And so the stapling, as a methodology, changed from shooting to becoming more of a stitching of the colonial wound. And rather, to tell stories of people that were silenced in history, or have not been remembered, and to use my energy more for highlighting those histories."