Afrofuturity opens portals to ever-unfolding constellations of possibility in representation and empowerment. 2024 heralds the start of Octavia Butler’s prophetic sci-fi novel, Parable of the Sower, a text by which I’ve long been inspired in teaching and practice. In honor of this moment at the story’s beginning, I plan to develop Camo Coat v2: The Garden Collection, a series of abstracted, kaleidoscopic textiles that engage the significance of this text through photographic commemoration of sites, specifically gardens both formal and personal, made through activation of these ancestral mycelial networks “in search of our Mothers’ gardens.”* This project centers the creative work of Black women like Butler who have planted seeds of freedom dreams and paved the way for liberation theories and global postcolonial movements rooted in holistic traditions and in the matrilineal adventures and badassery from which I am descended by blood and by choice.
Deepest gratitude to all who have supported Phase 1 and 2! And to all who supported the original collection launch! View the official runway video from 02.02.2020 here.
Thank you to James Jankowiak, Lauren Kelley, Morris Fox, Kristin Mariani, John Jahni Moore, Jazmine Catasus, Bianca Goyette, adrienne oliver, Alicia Thompson, Katelyn Carlson, ugochi nwaogwugwu, Claire Warden, Anatawan Byrd, Chér Jey Cuffie-Samateh, Leah del Harrison, Tracye Matthews, Lisa Wainwright, Patricia Gillman, Elissa Tenny, Dianna Frid, Arlene Turner-Crawford, Jacqueline Weaver, John Ellis, Senongo Akpem, Kristin Davidson, Carlye Frank, Sandee Kastrul, Brad Smith, Arin Fishkin, Laura Drey, Caroline Bellios, Atindi Palladino, Gregg Bordowitz, and Theaster Gates.
Plus thanks to all of the first tier patrons (mentioned on social media), those who selected not to be acknowledged publicly, and the anonymous patrons.
The power of the collective has made this project possible, and I look forward to sharing next steps with you!
ABOUT THIS PROJECT (2024)
The diary of Octavia Butler’s protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, begins on July 20, 2024, an important date that will be marked during this campaign. Her middle name evokes Oya, Yoruba orisa of whirlwinds and storms, as she sets off on a perilous journey through a post-apocalyptic California on fire, traveling northward to freedom, to the creation of a new world she calls Earthseed, and, ultimately, “to take root among the stars.”
The Camo Coat Collection serves as a conceptual and practical engagement with contemporary “dazzle camouflage” and ideas of protection and healing, especially for Black queer femme individuals in the urban landscape. It arose first in the Osanyin Commemorative Portrait Series of NEH Fellows amidst the flora of Emory University campus, as an archive of this historic gathering in Black aesthetics and sacred systems, specifically referencing Osanyin, the orisa of forest wisdom often depicted as half human and half tree. A spiritual camouflage translated to garment in coded pattern, the original Camo Coat Collection featured eight ensembles launched with monograph AFRIFUTURI 02022020 on this palindrome date with a beautiful community at Blanc Gallery in historic Bronzeville. The project responded largely to Chicago, to surveillance and the art of the shapeshifter, to movement and navigation within city and rural spaces, and to sites of respite and inspiration from lakefront skylines to prairie grasses.
CCv2: The Garden Collection introduces a series of site-responsive textiles as the first of this ambitious project’s three main phases, including research and travel, textile design and fabrication, and public launches. The initial goal for the campaign is to cover costs for Phase One of the project, which is the most critical piece of what will become the future CCv2 Collection. It entails travel to specific gardens in the U.S. that have important references to the Parable story and to my ongoing practice centering themes of trace, reclamation, and healing through body, textile, and architecture. At each location, I will create photographs which I will then develop using African fractal design concepts into commemorative textiles for the collection, as well as a series of Black portraitures mapping the points of journey.
Travel will include California and Massachusetts, with additional destinations here in Chicago. Locations in California include the desert gardens of the Huntington Library in Pasadena where Butler lived and where her archives are housed, and a pilgrimage to the historic Noah Purifoy Sculpture Garden in Joshua Tree (referencing years of teaching his work as part of the Black Arts Movement and Black West and inspired by his sculpture and activation of the body in performance). On the other side of the country, in Massachusetts I will visit the MFA Boston which has acquired the Hip Hop Flounce Camo Coat from the original collection (modeled by Tonika Johnson of Folded Map) and photograph gardens in the vicinity, then to Western Mass for the historic Olmsted-designed campus at my alma mater Smith College (which includes Paradise Pond and campus Underground Railroad connections), and the healing gardens of chosen family centered at Bela Vegetarian Restaurant in Northampton, MA.
If I reach my initial fundraising goal early, ideally before the long-awaited Parable start date of July 20, then I will initiate a stretch goal to support Phase Two of the project, which includes travel to other key reference locations in Morocco where I have been invited as Creative-in-Residence where I will create photography within the Jnane Tamsna property gardens; to Spoleto, Italy as a Fellow in the Laboratory for Planetary Arts focused on gardens, presented by the Center for Art, Design, and Social Research; and potentially to support future costs associated with the creation of and public launch activities for the official CCv2 Collection.
CCv2: The Garden Collection will be presented in 2025 along with next steps as supported by the additional phase stretch goals. Ultimately, I plan to organize the CCv2 Collection ensembles launch featuring The Garden textiles.
Exhibitions of the original Camo Coat Collection include Women of Afrofuturism at the SFO Museum through September 2026 which, as an airport and center of international transit, brings full circle the California connection with the Parable story’s travel from south to north, and the Sun Snake and Moon Goddess/Chicago Commemorative Camo Coats in the exhibition Titanic and Fashion: The Last Dance at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands through January 2026.
*In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens is the title of Alice Walker’s 1983 collected writings and originally an essay published in 1972.