African Objects: Psychoactives and Spirituality
with Portraits of Recovery
“Craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness.” Carl Jung on addiction.
Explore narratives on spirituality through the lens of recovery, as part of this collaboration with Manchester-based charity Portraits of Recovery as part of Recoverist Month.
The event will provide a rare opportunity to handle African cultural heritage objects from Manchester Museum’s Living Cultures collection that have been used for spiritual purposes, bringing activity that usually takes place in the Museum’s basement out into the open.
Objects become even more extraordinary when they connect with people, with our imagination, collectively helping us to create new connections, meanings and knowledge. This is a chance to participate in provenance research and to join conversations around spirituality and the use of psychoactives across the African and Black diaspora.
The complexity of the world and our place within it can often feel overwhelming. Our belief in a higher power and need for spiritual nourishment, be that the universe, mother nature or religion can feel ever more pressing. Sometimes described as ‘the hole in the soul’, an absence of spirituality can, for some, lead to substance-use issues.
The cultural use of psychoactive substances for ancestor worship, religious or spiritual purposes in Indigenous cultures within the African and Black diaspora has long been known about. Believed by many to facilitate increased connection to a power greater than themselves, this is set against a Western model of recreational and often problematic use. However, contemporary thinking is now looking towards Psychoactives and their potential use within the treatment of addiction.
The event’s conversational outcomes will help reimagine the Museum’s collection and initiate a 12-month community conversation on psychoactives, spirituality and the African and Black Diaspora. The project’s future artistic outcomes will be showcased as part of Recoverist Month in September 2025.
Dr. Njabulo Chipangura, Curator of Living Cultures, will lead the event as part of engagement activities helping to build on the provenance and biographical research on African collections with colonial contexts being undertaken.
A Recoverist Month event that, through the arts, changes the conversation on substance use and recovery.
Recoverist = Recovery + Activist
Recoverist Month September 2024 is an initiative led by Portraits of Recovery: a pioneering, Manchester-based, visual arts charity.