The Rape Fields, 2023

A collage series investigating the lost archives of Madame Tirailleurs, female African troops recruited into the French army in WWI & WWII. Women soldiers were imprisoned and stationed inside German concentration camps. Many were recruited as entertainers inside the German cultural industry in film, TV advertisement, human zoos, circus artists, modern art muses, radio voices and scientific projects. The documentation of their existence has largely been erased because it was considered under patriachal thinking that black women soldiers had no place in history and was considered a national embarrassment. With the assistance of archives in Basel, Germany, Senegal and England, the artist has taken several years to re-construct a literature of the realities of the women and the stories of love and division. The series reflect on botanical testimonies of the yellow rape flowers often located in German fields which were sites of violence and assault, the continuing flower colonial trade and sexual violence extending from Germany, Spain to Kenya, as well as reflecting the photographer’s own challenging personal experiences of survival. The women reclaim these fields as spaces of transformation, justice and love.