Art-Making for the Ancestors: Ifé Franklin's Ancestor Slave Cabin Workshop

Update (03/30/2025):

The event was a success! We would like to sincerely thank Ifé again for leading us through an inspiring, heartwarming, and educational afternoon of art-making, everyone who came out and participated with such grace, and the Providence Public Library for their space. Here are some photos from the afternoon:

Original Post:

An immersive community art-making event, Ifé Franklin's Ancestor Slave Cabin Workshop guides participants of all ages in creating miniature cabin dwellings designed to honor the ancestral spirits of enslaved African-descended people in the Americas.

Using fabric, beads, buttons, shells, raffia, patterned paper, craft sticks, and images celebrating Black identity, this hands-on workshop personalizes the spaces and lives of the enslaved, inviting participants to transform the painful history of slavery by creating dwellings of beauty, love, and dignity. Throughout the gathering, a curated slideshow and playlist will immerse participants in a celebration of Black family, beauty, resistance, resilience, and cultural pride. Ms. Franklin -- whose practice is rooted in the power of art to heal -- describes the miniature cabin creations as “offerings or gifts to the spirits of these ancestors, who never had a home of their own.”

Ifé Franklin is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is inspired by slave narratives, dreams, dance, dreams, dance, song, and visions. Her decade-long Indigo Project honors the lives and history of African-descended people whose labor generated the wealth of nations. At the center of Ms. Franklin's practice are her life-size replica ancestor slave cabins, which incorporate Adire fabric, an indigo-dyed cotton cloth decorated using a resist technique from the Yoruba culture.

"Art-Making for the Ancestors" marks Ms. Franklin's first community art-making event in RI. The workshop has engaged families and intergenerational audiences at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Black Market in Roxbury's Nubian Square, Boston College, and The Royall House and Slave Quarters of Medford, MA.

This event is sponsored by a Springboard Grant through the Tufts University Office of the VIce Provost for Research.