Nana Ama Bentsi-Enchill, Tsedaye Makonnen and Megan Livingston are on a mission to bring the African Body Snatcher home. The African Body Snatcher is the reawakened deity stuck—until now—between the coasts of James Town, Accra and Jamestown, Virginia.
The African Body Snatcher is the performance of a modern-day myth. The Snatcher is a deity born of a historical fiction that questions the treatment of the body, representative of the black African body—its dysmorphic stereotype, its dismemberment throughout the vast African diaspora.
This Transatlantic story involves a fated mix of the waters off the coast of Jamestown, Virginia and James Town, Accra that reawakens the entrapped spirit of Queen Dode Akai, a 16th century African slaver put to death by her own people. The Snatcher is on the last leg of her journey ... to reenter Africa by way of James Town, Accra in order to complete her prophesied return and release from entrapment.
As a part of Ghana's 2017 Chale Wote Street Art Festival themed "Wata Mata," we three will embody the African Body Snatcher in a live participatory procession through the streets of James Town, Accra. The reactivated deity will perform her duty once back home in West Africa: to once again snatch African bodies ... but this time she must put back together what was broken by her horrific role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
What remains to be seen is who the Snatcher will snatch first: Could it be you?