Across the global African world, the past remains present.
It breathes through us, whispering in the rhythm of our hearts and the movements of our creativity. The exhibition “Ancestral Frequencies,” presented during Miami Art Week at the Art Deco Museum, explores the living resonance of ancestral memory and its enduring impact on Black visual art. It celebrates how artists of African descent continue to channel inherited spiritual energies into contemporary expression, transforming memory into meaning and vision into vibration.
In African cosmology, art is not merely an aesthetic object; it is a vessel of spirit. The artist stands as a bridge between worlds, mediating between the visible and invisible realms. From Yoruba altars in Nigeria to Vodou temples in Haiti, from Candomblé gatherings in Brazil to the ancestral shrines of the Caribbean, creative practice is deeply tied to the sacred. Art functions as communication, a way to listen to, honor, and receive knowledge from those who came before us.
This understanding survived the Middle Passage and blossomed anew in the Diaspora. Despite displacement and trauma, people of African descent preserved the belief that their ancestors remain vital participants in the unfolding of their lives. Whether through ritual, song, prayer, or creative imagination, they sustained dialogue with the ancestral realm. In this sense, every brushstroke, sculpture, or textile in Ancestral Frequencies is not simply made; it is invoked.
Among the exhibiting artists, Chinemerem Eme Omeh of Nigeria stands as a powerful example of this ancestral continuum. His paintings fuse the material and the metaphysical, drawing inspiration from Igbo and Yoruba cosmologies. Each work invites viewers into a sacred conversation, where color, texture, and gesture become the language of spirit. Omeh’s creative process mirrors the act of divination, a visual form of seeking and receiving guidance. His compositions often resemble ritual spaces, charged with energy and reflection. Through his art, he reminds us that the ancestral world is not distant; it is ever-present, waiting to be acknowledged.
Kandy Lopez, an Afro-Dominican artist based in South Florida, approaches ancestral energy through portraiture and materiality. Her textile-based works weave together themes of identity, community, and remembrance. Using fibers, fabrics, and embroidery, Lopez connects contemporary aesthetics to the ancient traditions of weaving and adornment found throughout Africa and the Caribbean. Her portraits radiate dignity and resilience, turning threads into veins of memory and color into rhythm. Through her creative hand, Lopez honors the everyday beauty of Black life while illuminating the invisible threads that connect her subjects to their ancestral lineages.
Together, Eme Omeh and Lopez embody the central spirit of Ancestral Frequencies: art as spiritual practice. Their works, along with those of Kyle Adams, Robert Carter, Garry Grant, Briana McNeil, Tarah Paul, and O’Neil Scott, invite viewers to experience how ancestral energy continues to inform and animate contemporary Black artmaking. Each artist listens deeply to inherited wisdom and translates it into new languages of color, form, and emotion.
Ancestral Frequencies also celebrates the idea that creativity is itself an act of remembrance. When Black artists create, they do so in communion with the voices and visions of generations past. The process becomes a spiritual act, one that transcends time and geography, linking the African continent with its vast Diasporic extensions. In this way, the exhibition affirms that the ancestors are not abstract ideas but living presences guiding artistic intuition, resilience, and innovation.
Ultimately, Ancestral Frequencies is a meditation on connection—between spirit and matter, sound and silence, the seen and the unseen. It invites audiences to listen for the vibrations that echo through our cultural memory and to recognize that every creative gesture is part of a much older song. The show reminds us that art, in its highest form, is a sacred technology of remembrance and renewal. Through it, we hear the frequencies of our ancestors: still humming, still inspiring, still alive.
By Ludlow E. Bailey
Global Curator of African Diaspora Art