“rememory as in recollecting and remembering as in reassembling the members of the body, the family, the population of the past,” – Toni Morrison

Bilphena Yahwon was in residence at WPA to support her research on pre-civil war Liberia, and the connections between Baltimore and Liberia. Bilphena is a Baltimore-based archivist and restorative practices practitioner born in Liberia, West Africa. Her work is concerned with the uses of memory for Black folks: “how we inherit it, how we preserve it and how we pass it down.”

Yahwon writes about her research,

“It was while neck deep in the archives doing other research that I learned of this relationship between Baltimore and Liberia. Not only does the history of Liberia (as a colonial project) begin in Maryland, but Baltimore and Gbarnga, Liberia are sister cities. 

After my family fled Liberia for Côte d’Ivoire, we received refugee admission to the United States in 2001. We began our American journey in Virginia and in 2006 we found our way to Baltimore. I have called Baltimore home ever since. There was something chilling and exhilarating and profound about stumbling upon this connection between my birth home and the place I now call home — a full circle of sorts. I have spent the past year attempting to map out this relationship not just with historical documents but with images as well. 

While so much of archiving is personal for me, this research allows me to offer a possible missing piece for Black folks in Baltimore who may have gaps in their family albums and documents. There is a possibility that so many Black Marylanders have walking, breathing relatives in Liberia right now.”

About the Artist

Bilphena Yahwon is curator of the online library, The Womanist Reader, and is a collective member of the interdisciplinary publishing initiative, Press Press. She has recently launched Archive Liberia, a personal archival project chronicling Liberian history. This new archival journey began as a way to assist her memory and rememory.