Celebration of "Indigo Prayers" at the Michael C. Carlos Museum and the Praise House Project Launches at Emory

ATLANTA, Aug. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Sunday, August 28, a series of public events will take place to celebrate the exhibition "Indigo Prayer: A Creation Story" and the launch of the Praise House Project at Emory.

"Indigo Prayers" by visual artist activist, Charmaine Minniefield, recalls the ring shout as it would have been performed by her ancestors. Ring shouts were traditional African American movement and gathering practices whose cultural origins predate slavery. Ring shouts were performed in praise houses, small wooden structures used as gathering spaces, in safe, sometimes secret places, where those enslaved could remember themselves and secretly preserve their African identity. 

Minniefield's work recalls this act of remembrance as it was taught to her by her great grandmother, Oral Lee Fuqua, as prayer and as a symbol for resistance against erasure today.

The exhibition launches the Praise House Project at Emory University in preparation for multiple public art installations in the metro Atlanta area over the next 2 years through support from the National Endowment for the Arts "Our Town" grant. Each Praise House will honor the African American histories in its community, including Emory University, slated for the 2023-24 academic year.

Conversation and Dance Performance
1:30 p.m.
Cannon Chapel

Dr. Julie B. Johnson, chair of the Dance Department at Spelman College, and Tamara Williams, associate professor of dance at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, will join Charmaine Minniefield for a conversation about movement as medicine, embodied memory, and the Ring Shout as resistance.

The conversation will be followed by a performance by the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters from Darien, Georgia, led by seventh-generation shouter Griffin Lotson. The ten-member group has been performing professionally since 1980, educating and entertaining audiences around the United States with the "ring shout," a compelling fusion of counterclockwise dance movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion.

The program is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Emory Office of Spiritual and Religious Life.

FREE

Sunday Dinner - An Ancestral Feast
4:30 p.m.
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Ackerman Hall

Join artist activist Charmaine Minniefield for a contemporary take on the traditional gathering, prepared by 2022 James Beard Award finalist for "Emerging Chef", Chef Cleophus Hethington. Chef Cleophus will be preparing a family style meal inspired by his interpretation of the foodways of the African Diasporas. Break bread in honor of those who have come before as Minniefield shares her vision for the Praise House Project over the next two years, culminating with a Praise House on the Emory campus in 2023.

Fee: $60 for Carlos Museum members; $85 for non-members. Space is limited and registration is required for this event.

Patrons are invited to sponsor a guest for this event here: Link

To reserve space visit: Link

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. Her creative practice is community-based as her research and resulting bodies of work often draw from public archives and oral histories. Minniefield currently serves as the artist-in-residence for the King Historic District, supported by the Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC). She recently served as the Stuart A. Rose Library artist-in-residence at Emory University. Through a collaboration with Flux Projects, she presented her work Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta's historically segregated cemetery, to honor the over 800 unmarked graves that were discovered in the African American burial grounds. Minniefield has been awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Grant to present her Praise House project at locations throughout the Atlanta area.

CONTACT

For more information on Charmaine Minniefield and the Praise House Project visit PraiseHouseProject.org or call 404-202-2271.

Media Contact:

Tashion Macon

818.749.8786

[email protected] 

SOURCE Michael C. Carlos Museum