The exhibition Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story is presented in conjunction with Atlanta artist Charmaine Minniefield’s ongoing Praise House Project, in which she recreates the small, single-room structures used for gathering and worship. The project grew out of the artist’s research of the ring shout, a full-body, rhythmic movement and prayer, whose West African origins predate enslavement. The Carlos exhibition features seven large-scale paintings, which Charmaine created during a 14-month residency in the Gambia, West Africa during the pandemic, executed in indigo, mahogany bark, and crushed oyster shell. For Minniefield, the paintings—self-portraits of the artist dancing the ring shout— function as totems that reassert Black identity and resilience. On Sunday, August 28, a series of public events will take place to celebrate the closing of the exhibition and the launch of the Praise House Project at Emory.
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 Geechee Gullah 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. This program is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Emory Office of Spiritual and Religious Life and Program in Dance and Movement Studies.
Ancestral Feast
4:30 p.m.
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Ackerman Hall
THE FEAST IS SOLD OUT BUT THE CONVERSATION AND THE PERFORMANCE OF THE GEECHEE GULLAH RING SHOUTERS IS FREE, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, AND REGISTRATION IS NOT REQUIRED.
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