June 8, 2023 -  September 1, 2023  

Indigo Prayers began during a year-long self-initiated, pandemic forced artist residency in the Gambia. Using indigo pigments and other indigenous materials including crushed oyster shells, a material found in architecture along the coastal regions of the American South and West Africa, these works are powerful calls, “to conjure a new world and to imagine a new freedom today.”

These large painted works weave 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 her ongoing exploration of the Ring Shout, an early African-American practice of worship, resistance, and dance whose West African origins predate slavery.

From the artist’s website: “Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, the work of Charmaine Minniefield draws from indigenous traditions as seen throughout Africa and the Diaspora to explore African and African-American history, memory, and ritual as an intentional push back against erasure. She currently splits her time in residence between Atlanta and the Gambia, where she continues to study the origins of her cultural identity and Indigenous traditions by tracing the Ring Shout.

Minniefield's exhibition entitled, "Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story" was previously presented by the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.