Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story

From the venue:

On March 19, the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University will present the exhibition, Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story, a series of paintings by local Atlanta artist, Charmaine Minniefield, inspired by her time in the Gambia, West Africa searching for her grandmother’s ancestral lines. The resulting body of work builds on an ongoing exploration of the Ring Shout, an African American practice of resistance whose West African origins predate enslavement.
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 elements as ancestral totems reaffirming identity hidden in plain sight to show the way home. Minniefield inserts her own body into each work as an act of remembrance. Her movements, embodied memories of her maternal ancestors, reassert Black identity and resilience as resistance today.