Rukuvute captures both the tangible and metaphysical dimensions of belonging, memory, and healing that are central to the African diasporic experience.
Conceptualised by Belvin Tawuya, this project is inspired by Zimbabwe: Art, Symbol, and Meaning, a book by Gil Atherstone and Duncan Wylie, the culmination of over two decades of documenting sacred Indigenous practices from deep in the Zimbabwean countryside—showing how culture is understood and expressed by connecting to pieces of family history, social norms, and tradition. How fragments from the past influence our present and future and how ceremonies, stories, and objects help shape individual identity within a larger community.
“Rukuvute”, a traditional Shona word meaning umbilical cord, embodies the sacred connection between a person and their cultural identity. In many Southern African traditions, a newborn’s umbilical cord is planted in the soil within the grounds of their family’s ancestral home, symbolising both origin and eventual return. “Parukuvute”, the place where one’s umbilical cord lies, thus represents home, identity, and belonging. It is the spiritual anchor that grounds the individual to the earth, family, and ancestry.
This project reimagines Rukuvute as a curatorial and communal framework for healing, self-discovery, and reconnection within the African diaspora in the UK. It responds to the dislocation, identity fragmentation, and silent struggles of diasporic communities who have migrated, often out of necessity, and who now find themselves navigating lives between worlds. For many, the yearning to reconnect with parukuvute is both literal and metaphorical: a deep desire to return, to remember, to belong.
Through an immersive programme of creative workshops, storytelling, exhibitions, performances, and dialogues, Rukuvute seeks to recreate that sacred connection, providing a space where diasporic Africans can rediscover the fragments of their heritage and weave them into the fabric of their present lives.
A Digital Archive will serve as a living repository of stories, sounds, and visuals, a resource for future generations, and an enduring reminder of where the cord lies buried.
Rukuvute is more than an art project; it is an act of remembrance, resistance, and restoration. It invites diasporic Africans to trace the invisible thread that binds them to their origins, to reclaim fragments of identity scattered by migration, and to heal through creative communion. In reconnecting to parukuvute, we reconnect to ourselves, our ancestors, and one another.