What is Freedom and How is it Made?
The walls of the installation curve to mimic the path of rivers, whose free-flowing currents inspire and animate the art.
In the In Slavery’s Wake exhibit, freedom is imagined as a universe of ideas, beliefs, and practices, as opposed to a particular action or destination. Artist Daniel Minter worked closely with the exhibit curatorial team to bring this idea of a universe of freedom making to life. Minter’s universe is an immersive, winding installation at the heart of the exhibition. It links freedom-making practices across time, place, and geography.
Minter incorporates various physical, artistic, and spiritual elements to show the many ways freedom-making is expressed in daily life. Intricate wood carvings frame tools used to create freedom. Projected animations activate freedom constellations. Hues of blue span the depths of the ocean to the edges of the cosmos. Layers of images and patterns blur the boundaries of time and depict both the connectedness and diversity of cultural expressions among people of African descent. Minter’s Universe of Freedom Making invites visitors to make connections to their own freedom-making traditions and to mediate on the idea of freedom as a living set of practices.
Listen to “Voiced in Freedom,” an immersive soundscape of singing, poetry, vocalizations, and water that enlivens the Universe of Freedom Making.
Creating Universe of Freedom Making
Along the exhibition walls, Daniel Minter reimagines objects on display—cowrie shells, ceremonial masks, the coat of arms at the center of the Haitian flag. They are layered alongside figures engaged in acts of creation, from braiding hair to dancing. Minter connects freedom-making traditions across the diaspora and imagines how these objects and actions were used to create dignity and self-affirmation. The multimedia installation envelops audiences in art, music, and poetry.
Universe of Freedom Making is the heart of the exhibition.
Water from a nearby body evaporates into the exhibition, imbuing it with a sense of place.
The six objects displayed here show how freedom was made by and through everyday objects.
Hands of Freedom connect diverse acts of self-expression.
Food and Freedom Making
Rice Fanner Basket
Rice fanner basket from Senegal
This contemporary Senegalese fanner basket is connected to a long history of rice cultivation and expertise. Rice is thrown in the air, the light chaff floats away, and the grain falls back in the basket. On both sides of the Atlantic, rice culture draws from deep African traditions influencing cuisine, crafts, and language.
Music and Freedom Making
Violin
Violin from the Sugg-McDonald House
This violin belonged to the Sugg-McDonald family, descendants of an enslaved African American man who purchased his freedom in California. Enslaved people used instruments like the violin, adapting African and European musical traditions to create new forms. Black communities used the tools available to them to make and express freedom.
Freedom is a universe of practices
A constellation of beliefs
Heard in a laugh, Twisted in a braid
Stirred over an open fire, Bound in a prayer
Freedom is grown in a handful of seeds
Sung over a drum, Shared between kin
Dance, rebellion, migration, spirituality
Freedom is all of these things
Wrapped in the memories of what was
and the possibility of what may come
Text from the Universe of Freedom Making, In Slavery’s Wake exhibit
Daniel Minter
About the Artist
Daniel Minter
Daniel Minter is a painter, illustrator, and educator whose body of work deals with themes of displacement and diaspora, spirituality, and meanings of home. Minter employs such diverse materials as metal, wood, twine, and clay to construct an iconography of the Afro-Atlantic experience. Minter is cofounder of Indigo Arts Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent across the globe.
Making the Universe of Freedom Making Mural
Photos from Minter’s studio give a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the installation.
Featured Video
In the Studio with Daniel Minter
Daniel Minter speaks about the people, places, and histories that influence his work and manifest in Universe of Freedom Making. Raised in Ellaville, Georgia, among visible signs of slavery’s legacies, Minter’s family and community assured him of his inherent value. Many generations later, upon traveling to West Africa, he witnessed artists practicing freedom-making and self-affirming traditions that were similar to those with which he had been raised. This geographic and intergenerational connection is prevalent throughout the installation.
Freedom making to me is the ability for an individual to be able to transform in their mind the situation that their physical body is in.
Daniel Minter, 2024
Related Exhibition
Building Black Futures