Celebrating The Black Woman With Oge Egbuonu

Oge – I do. I don’t celebrate like I used to. But I grew up in Houston, Texas. In Houston, there were huge parades for it. I grew up in Third Ward where there’s a park where all the festivities happen around Juneteenth. So it’ll be, like, literally every Black family out at the park, playing hopscotch, barbecuing and drinking and playing games. I grew up around that celebration of Juneteenth. When I moved to LA and London 10 years ago, people didn’t know what Juneteenth was. I feel like most people just found out what it was last year during the uprisings, because there haven’t been many celebrations around Juneteenth prior to this year.

As a child, I didn’t understand the magnitude of the pain that the holiday represented because I grew up more so in the context of it being a celebration of freedom. And so I grew up being like, “Oh, Juneteenth! This is the day that we have a lot of fun and get to be around so many Black people and just do fun things.” The pain around the holiday didn’t really hit me until I got older and started doing the research for (In)Visible Portraits. I was introduced to so much African-American history that I was never taught in school or college. The magnitude and the weight of the pain that’s associated with Juneteenth didn’t really hit me until about three and a half years ago.

Oge – (In)Visible Portraits is dedicated to Black women and girls across the globe. The idea came to me in a meditation six years ago. While I was meditating, I had this thought pop up in my head that I was going to do a documentary on Black girls. At the time, I was still a yoga teacher and I was not in film. The fact that this came to my head while meditating was really weird. Then about five years later, a woman I met at a charity event hit me up and asked me to meet a producer. At that point in time, I was in a really dark place of depression. I had just left the company that I was with for almost four years, and I really had no idea what I was gonna do next with my career or my life. But I agree, and I walk into this meeting. There’s this middle-aged white guy sitting at a table. He just looks at me and he goes, “So I had this idea to do a film or something about Black mothers…” I’m just sitting there looking at him like, “What? Why? Why do you want to do this?”

It was so wild that he wanted to make a film like that. And I said, “Well, if I were to make anything, it would be something that celebrated Black women and girls, because we’re that before we’re mothers.” And then he said, “OK. If you can come up with a concept and I like it, I’ll fully fund your project.” He’s now a dear friend and the sole investor of this film.

Oge – It was very hard. I had to put myself back into therapy three months into it. At the time I was 31 or 32, and I was doing intense research and reading narratives from 14-year-old girls who were slaves, and raped and pregnant at the age of 11 and 12. You’re reading about the involuntary experimentation on Black women’s bodies with no anesthesia. You’re reading about all these different things that have happened to Black women that were not taught, like the Mississippi Appendectomy: Black and Native women would go to the doctor for, like, a cold and leave the hospital with a hysterectomy without even knowing. Reading about all these things weighed heavy on me. I also felt a duty to tell these women’s stories who are no longer with us — these women and girls who unfortunately gave their lives for our freedom. And so sitting with all of this and reading all this for the very first time started to really mess me up on a mental and emotional level. For six days a week I would be in research mode. On the seventh day — which was always Sunday — I couldn’t get out of bed before 3 or 4 p.m. I’d be in bed crying and really depressed, and I realized three months into it I needed additional help. Meditation and breathwork also gave me the strength I needed to be a vessel for these women’s stories.

Oge – I learned so much. I learned about J. Marion Sims, the person we call the Father of Gynecology. He’s celebrated across the world, and got his title by experimenting on involuntary Black women and girls without anesthesia. This is the same guy who believed that Black people didn’t feel pain. When slaves had babies, slave masters would give the Black babies to Sims so he could prove that Black folks don’t feel pain. He would take a screw and stick it in the middle of the child’s head, and record his experiences. We know this because he kept a journal.

I also learned about the roots of the song “Amazing Grace.” It originated from a man who was a pastor who went on slave ships and raped Black women and girls. He wrote “Amazing Grace” when he was on his deathbed — he was dying and he wanted to atone for all the sins he had made in his life. And that is one of the most sung and celebrated songs in Black churches, because people don’t know the origin.

Oge – Well, we saw that last year with all the uprisings. A lot of companies were being very performative; they were posting black squares on Instagram and saying Black Lives Matter. And then a few months later, they were back to their old ways. I’m not in the business of performative allyship — I want solidarity. Solidarity means that you see me, and you’re in the trenches with me. You understand that at the end of the day, it’s really about creating systems that are inherently inclusive.

Oge – (In)Visible Portraits shifted the way that I show up in life. Before I got into filmmaking, I taught yoga, meditation and breathwork in classes. I also worked with a center that rescued young girls from human trafficking right from the ages of 11 to 17. I would go in, partner with their therapists, and teach them restorative yoga and breathwork as a way for them to reconnect to their bodies. Because whether it’s human trafficking or sex trafficking, when you’re being trafficked, the way that you survive is you dissociate from your body. I taught them how to reconnect back to their body through breathwork and meditation. And so when I left the yoga world and I got into film, the films I created were around social justice.

Before (In)Visible Portraits, I was very much operating through the lens of revisionist history that was taught in schools, right? When I actually started to do the research and do independent investigation into the history of this country, it really lifted the veil for me — most of what we experience or were taught is either revisionist history, or a myth, or both. This society is really rooted in the myth of white supremacy. It’s rooted in patriarchy. That’s the beauty of (In)Visible Portraits.

Oge – So much! I’m working on two documentaries, a TV show, a podcast and a book. I’m also working on an art exhibit — I’m super excited about it.

Oge – They are both going to shift culture.

For another one of Oge’s incredible creations, watch her star-studded Beauty of Becoming film — featuring Naomi Osaka, Jaden and Willow Smith, Dolores Huerta, Tremaine Emory and others — below.