BERNICE MULENGA:
SERVICE TO MEMORY

On being remembered.

I’m currently writing this from my apartment in Rio De Janeiro. Post carnival by a day, and a few hours and I’m feeling full.

I’m only two weeks into my trip. My next stop is to visit a friend in her beach town, Bahia, and then return to Rio before returning to London.

You would think that given where I am everything would be peachy but I’m coming out of a very intense and ongoing period of loss, grief and change. Not going to lie, it sucks but through these feelings, I found the title for this piece. 

My archive is a memory to me, strangers, friends, lovers. It’s a service to the different versions of me. The one that started this archive as a teenager seeking out something else in life! The me who as a young adult lost loved ones, made more friends, travelled, and is now carrying all of this, a little heartbroken but still full. I’m proud of this archive, I’m always in awe of the love it has brought me. A sweet reminder from my friend Ghadir last week: “You are so loved, do you know that?” That I do.

This archive has saved me, it’s connected me to people on a different level, it’s life through my eyes, it’s the mundane (not for me) with extraordinary people. It’s everything and it’s also nothing. It inquiries and requires. To think that next year will mark a decade of this collection of love and I look forward to birthing my first photobook!

To every single person who reminds me what my work means to them, who has let me capture them and been in #friendsonfilm - thank you.

With love and grief.

Bernice <3