Coming Home

Coming Home, 2024

Coming Home begins with water, not simply as landscape but as a place that remembers.

The work draws from research into the Black Atlantic and the histories and oral memory surrounding Igbo Landing. Rather than illustrating a specific historical event, the painting considers what remains after passage: memory, refusal, inheritance, and the possibility of return.

There is no ship and no visible shore. Figures swim, rest, emerge, and disappear within the blue. It is unclear whether they are leaving or returning. Kente cloth and Egyptian papyrus surround the painted field, bringing material histories of place and ancestry into conversation with the water.

At its center is a question:

What does it mean to come home when home has been carried through generations?

Coming Home, 2024
Acrylic paint, Kente cloth, Egyptian papyrus, unstretched canvas
36 × 60 in. (91.4 × 152.4 cm)