Interview: Mele Broomes

“As much as I tried to lean into old and historic remedies, I’d been conditioned not to trust them. I had to break that down.” The multi-disciplinary artist Mele Broomes is reflecting back on her journey to better health, one of several influences on her upcoming live show, which will be the Edinburgh Art Festival’s Opening Performance. As Broomes trialled and errored treatments for knee pain and fibroids on her womb, she experimented with castor oil. The very viscous oil has been used for thousands of years as a natural wound healer, laxative and moisturiser, with some midwives using it to induce labour. Broomes began applying it daily to her skin, letting it absorb slowly.

“At first it’s a lot. It takes time to permeate, but it will get there. You have to trust the process. Over weeks and months, it started doing its thing. I became obsessed. The oil was like my friend! The more I trusted it, the more I was reaping the benefits. It’s like when you’re getting to know someone. Sometimes it just lands, other times you gotta ease in. Being warm helps speed things up and that’s where the title comes from.”

Broomes’ knee pain disappeared completely and her skin and nails visibly improved, but more than that, she felt she was tapping into a kind of generational wealth, gaining wisdom from her elders and nature. That tied in with a series of online conversations that Broomes had carried out during lockdown with 15 black women, including nurses, artists and youth workers. “Those were nourishing dialogues, finding connections and commonalities in our politics, work ethics or experiences. We discussed obstacles created by whiteness and found solidarity and friendship.”

through warm temperatures will include moments of ‘purging heavy, historic realities’ as well as glimmers of euphoria. Exploring relationships with health, bodies and identities often led into painful, uncomfortable conversations, for example around body dysmorphia, poor mental health, loneliness and isolation. Broomes’ hopes however that her amalgamation of experimental vocals, choreographed movements and improvised music also reflects the healing that can be found both in community and castor oil, a richly abundant natural elixir.

Broomes has previously given astonishing performances as part of Glasgow’s performance festival Buzzcut, Montreal’s avant garde arts festival OFFTA, Milan’s Festival del Silenzio and Lagos’ street art festival Tiwa N’Tiwa among others, and for this interactive EAF event, she will use movement and live vocals to pay homage to the conversations around ‘diasporic interpretations of wellbeing’.

The audience will enter Custom Lane’s gallery space to find around 80 small bottles of castor oil which they can smell or test on their skin, before using their own mobile phones to select from four mesmerising videos pre-recorded by Broomes. In one, Broomes gives herself a slow, sensual shoulder and neck massage, making luscious curves in the air above her head, fingers stretched, limbs relaxed, skin slick with castor oil. The audience will then be led into a second space featuring four dancers and live cello from America-born, Scotland-based musician Simone Seales, who strives to create ‘spaces of radical joy within classical music’. Broomes will be dressed in red and has styled the performance using shades of red and brown to represent the castor oil plant – with its dark brown seeds and decorative red flowers.

“My research has made me explore care for self and love for self. Castor oil has made me feel soothed, it’s eradicated my knee pain. It’s wild. Your health can bring you wealth, whatever that means to you.”

Show: Mele Broomes: through warm temperatures

Venue: Custom Lane

Time: 7pm-8pm, 9 Aug