POEMS BY MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER I

In Poems by my Great Grandmother I, Mutu transforms an everyday object—the East African sufuria—into a resonant body of memory. The aluminum cooking pot, etched with circular lines, becomes a space of inscription where gestures of writing, cooking, and sharing food converge. The artist’s hand leaves a trace that is both visual and sonic: the tool’s movement creates a faint vibration, a sound that lingers inside the vessel. The sufuria, an everyday Indian object, mass-produced and widespread, speaks of cultural exchange and displacement—having replaced vernacular pottery across East Africa. Here, it holds imagined histories: a poem never heard from a grandmother never met. The work draws a personal connection built through imagination, but anchored in an unbreakable bond of kinship. Cooking and eating together is a foundational ritual across cultures, a collective and intimate act of transmission. The poem is recorded through abstract inscription. The work holds presence without disclosing content, like a whispered memory passed hand to hand. The act of inscribing becomes a way to honour what cannot be fully retrieved, but must still be carried.

 

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