Tokie Rome-Taylor “Reclamation”   

       My work centers children, creolization--a hybridization of African cultural traditions and spiritual practice with those of the new world of the Americas, and the integration of  objects as artifacts and conduits of memory.  I show how creolization  was a means of survival, allowing subversive rebellion and autonomy from those that would otherwise oppress them.  The creolization of common western symbolic  elements of wealth and status; jewels, lace, velvet, etc. psychologically shifts  the internal narrative of the viewer towards elevation, acceptance,  expanded perception, and expectation of the subjects.  

Created out of necessity, these images use creolization to counter the narrative that people of the African diaspora  had all signs of their history, status, spiritual and cultural practices erased when they were brought to the Americas.  This portrait based work shifts the visual narrative of Africans in the diaspora while also exploring  the spiritual connections that were subverted in plain sight through syncretic rituals. 

Subjects are inserted into the past of an alternate reality, creating a narrative where they are ancestors in the present for their heirs to see in the future. These ancestors embody power over destiny, representation, and spirit, influencing the viewer as  their descendants.  

The children in my works act as the conjurers, welcoming with their innocence and purity, a spirit open to ancestors and a rewriting of their history. Offerings of artifacts were all ritual means of conjuring and connecting to spirit and ancestor, as well as a means of passing on tradition and status in plain sight.  I make no attempt to recreate the past, rather to connect to diasporic practice. Through cultural material within the work, such  as pearls, lace, cotton, bowls, feathers, old world artifacts of spiritual practice become a new world means to have some control over body, mind in spirit in a hostile new world.  Feathers act as foils, for flight and freedom, passed down as factual fable between Africans trapped in the Americas. Mirrors and visual magnifiers are used to look back at the past but to also confront the present and future. The heavy use of pearls, replaces the traditional african beads used to anoint, represent status and wealth. Lacking access in the Americas, the hybridization of European status and wealth have been co-opted in to connect to spirit and ancestral tradition of lavish adornment. 

I am connecting to my own personal history as a southern girl, taught nothing of her history. Longing to understand my place as an daughter of the Diaspora, my journey to connecting to home has been guided by me paying attention to energy, signs, and intuition as ancestral guidance to create works that explore race, history, spirit, memory and material culture as  a means of connecting to my past. This connection is one the south has not taught its children, so I  grew up with a void. The conversations around my artwork strive to explore these rituals, material artifacts as a means of channeling our history.