Artist/ Heritage Video Essay & Artist Work
The Black ArtChives
Where art and the archive collide through the lens of resistance and the botanical wisdom of African and enslaved women during the era of slavery and beyond
African and Enslaved Women's Reproductive Resistance
Seditious Seeds of Forbidden Flowers
Akosua's video essay was featured at the inaugural sexual health event at the Natural History Museum, London, which was part of the 'Generation Hope 2025, Fixing Our Broken Planet. Her work is presented in the video essay format. This approach aligns with her methodology of critical fabulation, enabling her to visualise the resistance of African and enslaved women to slavery and to document their botanical knowledge still hidden within natural history, museum, and archive collections
This video essay was inspired by the Okra specimens from Barbados and Ghana in Hans Sloane's Vegetable Substances Collection (1688 and 1702). NHM
Selected Organisations that have Featured my Work
Featured Work
UNESCO Women in Science Virtual Exhibition Reclaiming Knowledge, Reframing Resistance
Akosua Paries-Osei works at the intersection of the history of science, slavery, and colonial law. Her investigations reveal how medical anthropology once served to justify racial hierarchies and control over Black women’s bodies. By studying enslaved women’s knowledge of plants such as aloe, used to manage fertility even at the risk of death she exposes the scientific silencing of their expertise and the ways in which this knowledge became a form of resistance.
