OPENING ON MAY 4TH AT BEACON HILL
The Praise House Project
Standing on Hallowed Ground
BY CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD
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Kimberly Binns - Digital Media and Visual Design
Santiago Páramo - Sound Installations
Salah Ananse and Mali Irene as We Are Djeli - original soundscore
Opal Moore - Griot
Julie B Johnson - Dance Collaborator
Kemi Bennings - Production and Programming
Dr Candy Tate - Oral History
Cienna Minniefield - Community Programming
Grace Kim - Strategic Partnerships Director
Oluremi Sano - Development Consultant
Jerome Fletcher - Finance and Administration
Osunkoya Chavon Bryant - Administrative Support
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• National Endowment for the Arts
• Emory University
• Center for Cultural Power
• DeKalb County
• City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
• Imlay Foundation
• Wish Foundation
• Georgia Pacific Foundation
• The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta
• Tull Foundation
• Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative
• Fulton County
• CD Moody Construction
• Perry Troutman Law Firm
• Harris + Smith Architectural Firm
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• Atlanta Branch of Association for the Study of African American Life and History - ASALH
• Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American History and Culture
• Atlanta Regional Commission
• Culture Centers International
• Flux Projects
• Focus Community Strategies
• Georgia State University Creative Media Industries Innovation Lab
• Georgia Tech @Home Global Program
• Historic District Development Corp.
• Michael C. Carlos Museum
• Stuart A. Rose Library
Image: Praise House at Emory by William Feagan, Jr
The Praise House Project is a community-based initiative which places multimedia, site specific public art installations within communities in order to uphold the African American histories and narratives of the area in an effort to address issues of erasure and systemic inequities. Each Praise House is a small wooden structure with a fully immersive digital projection installation of a Ring Shout, created from archives and/or footage collected from the community in which it resides, with a sound installation emanating from within, inviting gatherings in safe spaces, like praise houses once before.
THE PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT
STANDING ON HALLOWED GROUNDS
My great-grandmother's name was Ora Lee Fuqua. She was born on a sharecropping plantation in Central City, Kentucky. We were owned by the Fuqua family, a prominent white family in the South and beyond. My work retraces her story by recalling the Ring Shout.
Praise houses were small wooden structures, initially on slave plantations, used for gathering and worship. It was in these secret safe spaces that the Ring Shout was performed, a traditional African-American movement practice taught to me by my great-grandmother. The Ring Shout was reborn in the Western hemisphere as resistance to laws intended to dismantle African identity and community. This full-body rhythmic prayer was performed as congregants would stomp or shout upon the wooden floors, creating a communal drum, secretly preserving their African cultural identity and traditions - all while remembering freedom.
This work recalls that prayer.
The Praise House Project Honors Beacon Hill
CURRENT LOCATION:
346 West Trinity Place, at the corner of West Trinity Place and Commerce Drive in Downtown Decatur, Georgia.
On View: May 4 - September 14th (pending approvals)
Interior access and viewing on Fridays and Saturdays, 12-5pm
UPCOMING PROGRAMMING
May 4th @ 3pm - Opening Artist Talk during the Decatur Arts Festival. Exterior Projection (Sunset 8 - 10pm)
June 19th @ Sunset - 8-10pm - Exterior projection in observance of Juneteenth
June 23rd @ 3pm - Juneteenth celebration in honor of the ancestors of Beacon at the Praise House. WEAR WHITE - Exterior projection at sunset.
July 4th @ Sunset - 8-10pm - Exterior projection, for the fireworks!
August 16th @ Sunset 8-10pm - Exterior projection to launch the Beacon Hill Pan African Festival. Festival dates August 16th-17th
Oral History recording of Mayor Emeritus Elizabeth Wilson.
Image of Praise House at Beacon Hill by Soren Christiansen of Skysee
Forging Freedom: About Beacon Hill, a Freedmen’s Town in Downtown Decatur
Known as “the Bottom” in its earliest days, when it was settled by freed slaves after the Civil War, this square mile of Decatur was the site of a thriving African-American community of homes, business, churches, and schools. In the early part of the 20th century, the area became known as “Beacon Hill” or just “Beacon.”
Like any small community, it had its own landmarks, characters, business and community leaders, and other common threads that formed a rich fabric of life.
But white Decatur largely considered the Beacon Community a blighted slum, and in the 1930s began to condemn sections of it to make way for public housing.
THE PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT AT EMORY
The Praise House Project at Emory
By CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD
Located at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church
Preview during Elevate Atlanta: October 14-15, 12-5pm
Opening Event: October 19, 7-9pm
On View: October 20 - December 15 , 2023
Image of Praise House at Emory by Julie Yarbrough
Oral Histories of Oxford
PRESERVING BLACK NARRATIVES
Dr. Candy Tate, representing Culture Centers International, leads the oral histories component of the Praise House Project. The recorded histories compile an archive which will live both in the community and online. Partners include the Stuart A. Rose Library, the Auburn Avenue Research Library and the DeKalb History Center.
Interviews include descendants of those enslaved by Emory. including Rev. Dr. Avis Williams among others.
Image by Kimberly Binns, Provenance Media.
The Praise House Project
At Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery, presented by Flux Projects, 2021
Image: Praise House at Oakland Cemetery by William Feagan, Jr
REMEMBRANCE AS RESISTANCE
The Praise House Project at Oakland Cemetery was presented in 2021 by Flux Projects in partnership with Emory University. It honored the over 800 unmarked graves of ancestors displaced by the Atlanta City Council in 1866, into a flooded area, in what became the African American Burial Grounds of Oakland Cemetery. The work honors the memories of those ancestors once lost, now found.
The National Endowment for the Arts and Emory
The Praise House Project was awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts "Our Town" grant, in order to place Praise Houses in multiple locations within the metro - Atlanta area over the next two years, uplifting the African American histories of each community.
2023-2024 Praise House target locations include: South-View Cemetery in South-Atlanta; DeKalb County initially at Beacon Hill and then moving to Flat Rock in Lithonia; Emory University’s Atlanta campus; and a potential permanent installation at the Chattahoochee Brick Company.
Confirmed sponsors include the National Endowment for the Arts, Emory University, City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, DeKalb County, Fulton County, Georgia Pacific Foundation, and the Wish Foundation. Community partners include South-View Cemetery Foundation, Flux Projects, the Atlanta Regional Commission, and Culture Centers International.
COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING - LOOKING BACK TO SEE FORWARD
Complementing programming will draw connections from the past to the present by offering community activations through public presentations in visual art, music, dance, literary arts, faith and social change, and the humanities. The project will offer access to such resources as the Slave Voyages database at Emory University along with a number of local, national and international archives.
The work invites conversations around place and belonging while engaging a global community of scholars, creatives, historians, activists, institutions and audiences to address issues of erasure past and present, to imagine a new freedom today.
Contact
Charmaine@PraiseHouseProject.org 404-549-7014
For sponsorship inquiries contact Grace Kim at Grace@PraiseHouseProject.org
