There is something undeniably familiar about the way we express ourselves through our bodies as Africans. Our dance styles are as vast as the countries contained on the continent; a continent so multi-cultural and multi-dimensional that the only way you could describe what makes the way we move so special, is the word, energy.

EADEM named a face mist after Mami Wata and the internet split wide open. Fear, pride, confusion, celebration all at once. Beneath the noise lives a question worth sitting with: what shifts when a spirit shaped by centuries of movement and memory shows up on a beauty shelf? This piece offers clarity, context, and cultural literacy.

Before the shutter clicks, a negotiation happens. For over a century, that negotiation was rigged. Film emulsion was calibrated for white skin. The "Shirley cards" that cinematographers used to calibrate skin tones and lighting featured only Caucasian models until well into the 1970s.

Anita Kevin is a South Sudanese and Ugandan model. I first met her in 2016 as a curator bringing female visual artists and performers together at exhibitions hosted by her platform Okuki. The platform, which also hosted panel discussions for these artists, has grown to include a website to host similar content that reaches a wider audience through the site and social media.

Movements begin in rooms without cameras, built through organizing that compounds over years before anyone outside notices. Then visibility arrives: funders, media, international conferences and suddenly the people on stage speaking about the work rarely match the people who built it.