Looking ahead to 2022

Indigo Prayers November 13, 2021 through May 22, 2022

Charmaine Minniefield, a local Atlanta artist, was inspired by her time in the Gambia, West Africa, searching for her grandmother's ancestral lines by following the encoded messages hidden within her cultural identity. The resulting body of work builds on an ongoing exploration of the Ring Shout, a traditional African-American worship practice whose West African origins predate slavery. This fullbodied rhythmic prayer was taught to Minniefield by her great-grandmother. It was performed by her ancestors during enslavement as a way to secretly preserve their African identity. Minniefield’s work explores indigenous pigments like indigo, crushed oyster shells, and mahogany bark as evidence of cultural preservation through time and across the Middle Passage. Her work recalls the history of these mediums as ancestral totems reaffirming identity, like the Adinkra symbols in freedom quilts, hidden in plain sight, to show the way home. Remembering the ancestors and inserting her own body, as self-portraits, into the series and ritual asserts Black identity and resilience as resistance today.

Indigo Prayers is being presented in conjunction with Minniefield’s Praise House, which recreates the small, single room structures in which enslaved people gathered to worship. The first in the series of Praise Houses was constructed at Oakland Cemetery to celebrate Juneteenth 2021 and to honor the over 800 enslaved people interred in the cemetery’s African American Burial Grounds. While Minniefield’s Praise House at Oakland has now closed, she plans future locations on Emory University’s main campus, at South-View Cemetery, where Congressman John Lewis was laid to rest, and in downtown Decatur. For more information, visit bit.ly/3D1jFax. Z

And I Must Scream January 23 through May 8, 2022

The upcoming exhibition, And I Must Scream, will examine contemporary social and political issues through art and is curated the museum’s Curator of African Art, Dr. Amanda H. Hellman. According to Dr. Hellman, "The exhibition seeks out the voice of the artists to explore incomprehensible man-made issues with an aim to connect artists from a range of countries." The exhibition will feature works by 10 contemporary artists. These works of art confront and give shape to the inconceivable crises we face today, from environmental destruction and human rights violations to governmental corruption, displacement, and the pandemic. Through monstrous, grotesque, and humanoid figures and forms, the works combine to show these issues to be both urgent and interconnected. Through this lens, the exhibition can be seen as a call to action. This ambitious exhibition and accompanying programming will bring scholars and artists from across the country and around the world to teach classes, facilitate performances, and create new works of art. Z

above left: Charmaine Minniefield (American), Indigo Portrait Ring Shout 1, 2020, indigo and crushed oyster on canvas, ©Charmaine Minniefield, Courtesy of Charmaine Minniefield. above right: Steve Bandoma (DRC), Perruche perruque, Costumes, 2018, Encre sur papier, 140 x 110 cm © Steve Bandoma, Courtesy MAGNIN-A Gallery, Paris. below right: Fabrice Monteiro (Belgian-Beninese), Prophecy #2, 2013, Canson Infinity Platine Fibre Rag 310gr, 60 x 40 cm, © Fabrice Monteiro, Courtesy MAGNIN-A .Gallery, Paris