Nazareth’s long walks examine borders, displacement, and the global scale shaped by colonial history. L’Arbre D’Oublier was filmed in Ouidah, Benin, once one of the largest slave-trading ports in West Africa. The work centers on the Oblivion Tree, a site associated with a ritual imposed on captured and enslaved Africans before their forced shipment across the Atlantic. Historical accounts describe that men were compelled to walk seven times around the tree in a rite intended to sever their ties to their past – family, community, land, and memory – before being trafficked into slavery in the Americas.

In the video, Nazareth walks 437 times around the Oblivion Tree. The repeated movement reverses the direction and scale of the historical ritual. The gesture does not reenact the imposed act but responds to it, addressing the attempted erasure of memory produced by enslavement. The project extends across four videos – Ipê Amarelo, Cine Africa, Cine Brasil, and L’Arbre D’Oublier. In each, Nazareth repeats the circular walk around different trees in Africa and Brazil, including the ipê amarelo (golden trumpet tree), one of the national symbols of Brazil.