Originally commissioned by Performa 17 – Afroglossia, the work Tree Identification for Beginners was first shown in New York, in November 2017. A beginner’s guide to the artist’s family tree, the film gives a biographical account of her mother during her years as a socialist student, on a trip to the United States in 1966 as the guest of a propaganda programme aimed at African students, sponsored by the US State Department. This voyage of personal discovery happened at a time when movements for decolonisation, civil rights, Pan-Africanism and black power were emerging.

The work links stop-motion animation of Montessori educational toys and grammatical symbols with descriptions of her mother’s journey and the programme organisers speaking about their expectations in terms of the attitude and behaviour of the African participants. The images do not document this, but they reveal, in constant motion, the doing and undoing of puzzles, boards and grids into shapes and colours. They are children’s games into which power games and resistance strategies are fitted.

The work was acquired for the CAM Collection in 2020, having been shown in the exhibition ‘Moi je suis la langue et vous êtes les dents’, in the Project Space, in 2019.