Keynote Speaker for King Celebration
ABOUT THIS EVENT:
Julia Thompson Smith Chapel, Sanctuary
141 East College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030
Charmaine Minniefield ‘95 will discuss her upcoming Praise House Project at Beacon Hill in downtown Decatur and its historic connection to Agnes Scott College and the importance of acknowledgment and remembrance in imagining a new freedom today.
Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, the work of artist activist 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. Minniefield 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 Atlanta’s historically segregated cemetery to honor the over 800 unmarked graves that were discovered in the African-American burial grounds. Minniefield was awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Grant to present her Praise House project at three different locations in the metro Atlanta to celebrate the African-American history of those communities. Her exhibition entitled, "Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story" was recently presented by the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. Her next Praise House is slated to rest in Beacon Hill in downtown Decatur in 2023.
