A Sorcery of Sustenance

My current body of work investigates the ways that traditional African food staples serve as a conduit for ancestral memory and cultural identity throughout the African Diaspora. Inspired in part by the popular Netflix series High on the Hog, which examined how African American cuisine transformed America, and my travels through West Africa, I use sculptural form to reposition food production and consumption as an alchemy that satiates the body and the spirit. In this context, nourishment or sustenance, has a double meaning that refers both to the corporeal and the incorporeal–to this world and to “other” worlds. Food is a vessel of history and histories embedded within the okra seed and the meaty flesh of the yam.

I research the history of African foods such as tamarind, kola nuts, okra, rice, cassava and others, tracing their journey to the Americas through the corridor of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how their arrival shaped the nascent diet of the "new world." I pay particular attention to their spiritual symbolism among West African cultures and I translate that information into sculptural form creating works that reference the material and spiritual duality of food cultivation and consumption. My presentation examines this connection through the prism of my studio practice and an overview of the trans-Atlantic corridor as a "highway" of knowledge transference evident in African American cuisine.