International Symposium for Visual Culture & Exhibition 2025

the waters whisper sweet solace is a virtual reality experience that invites viewers into the sacred landscapes of North Carolina, where the spirit of Black life moves through rivers, trees, and shifting sands. This work is rooted in the deep soil of Afro-Carolinian history, where memory is not just preserved but alive. Breathing through the land, the water, and the stories passed down through generations.

The film honors the land as both witness and participant. It holds the echoes of laughter, labor, mourning, and resistance. Through archival materials from Duke University and original footage of Afro-Carolina, the piece traces the everyday lives and extraordinary resilience of Black communities who have shaped these spaces with care, creativity, and defiance.  It remembers the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 not as a footnote, but as a turning point. A brutal act of white supremacist terror that echoes through generations. It remembers the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 not as a distant tragedy, but as a rupture that still reverberates. A wound in the landscape that demands remembrance, healing, and justice. The land remembers, and so must we.

At its core, the waters whisper sweet solace is a spiritual offering. It is a call to listen. To the ancestors, to the land, to the quiet wisdom that lives in stillness and movement alike. As viewers journey through this immersive world, they are guided by ancestral presence, not as ghosts of the past but as active forces shaping the present and dreaming the future. The work draws from the traditions of Black spirituality, where liberation is not only political but cosmic, where the sacred and the everyday are intertwined.

This is a vision of Afrofuturism grounded in place, not in escape, but in return. It looks toward a future built from the fragments of memory, the strength of survival, and the radical imagination of those who refuse to be erased. the waters whisper sweet solace invites us to remember, to grieve, to celebrate, and to imagine together. It is a portal into a world where Black life is held with tenderness, where the land remembers, and where the future is shaped by those who have always known the way.

Thank you to my collaborators:

Akeema-Zane

Brandon King 

Carrie Hawks

Courtney Staton 

On View:

• September 10 – 28, 2025 | Exhibition “Visual Culture 2025” at the CICA Museum, Korea
• September  20, 2025 | International Symposium at the Cultural Arts Center and the  Cafritz Foundation Arts Center, Silver Spring, MD, USA