Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story Now Open “ What if seven Black women spinning counterclockwise, each upholding a single attribute of God, conjured creation? What if they were charged with birthing humankind, and passing each attribute on to every generation to come? Cyclically moving from the past to present, powered by an infinite love, what if they encoded these attributes as secret messages within our cultural identity, like symbols hidden within a Freedom Quilt, pointing the way home to freedom? What if it is our single responsibility to only remember?” —Artist Charmaine Minniefield 6
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n the exhibition Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story, Atlanta artist Charmaine Minniefield considers questions of Black identity as resistance against erasure, past and present. Created during a year-long, self-initiated, pandemic-forced artist residency in the Gambia, the work weaves together ancestral memories of resistance in response to both contemporary and historic acts of erasure. This sojourn, though
unexpected, was inspired by recent world events and Minniefield’s ongoing exploration of the Ring Shout, an early African-American gathering and worship practice whose West African origins predate slavery. Having grown up in the Pentecostal faith, Minniefield had experienced this full-bodied rhythmic prayer taught to her by her great-grandmother, as performed by her ancestors during enslavement. The knowledge of indigo cultivation
ab ove Charmaine Minniefield. Photo by Jerry Siegel.
r ig h t Charmaine Minniefield (American). Freedom. 2020. Indigo and crushed oyster on canvas. ©Charmaine Minniefield.
