Charmaine Minniefield

Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, the work of 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 National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Grant to present her Praise House project at three different locations in the metro Atlanta area to celebrate the African-American history of those communities. She currently splits her time in residence between Atlanta and the Gambia, where she continues to study the origins of her cultural identity and Indigenous traditions by tracing the Ring Shout. 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.