Join us for Hadassa Ngamba's walking performance, ‘Pathway Ngamba’ (2025), co-commissioned by Tate Liverpool and Liverpool Biennial.

1 artist in this event

Engage in Hadassa Ngamba’s walking performance as she interacts with people in the streets of Liverpool and explores how palm oil ties Liverpool to Congo.

Bringing together sandstone and palm oil – two foundational materials of Liverpool’s geological and colonial history – Ngamba will cover her body with a mixture of both and offer people an embrace. This is a way to acknowledge the presence of Congo in the DNA of the city of Liverpool.
Coming from Boma, a port city that was crucial in the development of the transatlantic slave trade with Central Africa, and later in the extraction of natural resources from Congo, Ngamba’s practice explores the legacies of the slave and colonial trades on the country’s contemporary cartography and social, political and economic configurations. In this performance she maps a new trajectory in the city of Liverpool, in order to highlight the connections between Liverpool and Boma, ports that have had parallel importance in the industrial and colonial history of both Congo and the UK.

Co-commissioned by Tate Liverpool and Liverpool Biennial 2025. Supported by the Defise Foundation.

Location:

Liverpool Cathedral > Black-E

Time:

Friday 6 June 2025, 3pm – 4.30pm (the procession will last approximately 45 minutes, followed by a 45 minute artist talk)

Access:

The event registration form below invites guests to share any access requirements. Additionally, if you’d like to speak to our access lead before the event, please get in touch with access@biennial.com.

This event includes a 45-minute walk through Liverpool. Some parts of the walk have uneven access and may require assistance. It will be possible to join the end of the walk at The Black-E and then attend the artist talk.

The artist talk element of the event will be seated.

About the Artist

Hadassa Ngamba (b. 1993, Kizu, Democratic Republic of the Congo) grew up between Boma, the prototype of Congolese industrialization, and Lubumbashi, a major mining city in the Haut-Katanga region, which hosted various kingdoms pre-colonization. Ngamba’s work initially focused on maps, using them to expose signs of exploitation.