WhoFish - Local Events and Activities

Title:	Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story
Date:	3/19/2022 - 9/10/2022
Address:	Michael C. Carlos Museum, 571 South Kilgo Circle, Atlanta, GA 30322
Location:	Atlanta, GA
Hours:	Tuesday - Saturday: 10 a.m. — 5 p.m. / Sunday: Noon — 5 p.m.
Cost/Cover:	Free - $8
Web Page:	https://carlos.emory.edu/exhibition/indigo-prayers-creation- ...
Contact Info:	404-727-0509

Details:

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 full-bodied 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. It 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.