Laurel Richardson

This is a culmination of work created on my research trip to Ghana during the Year of Return, which marked the 400th anniversary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Some of the work was also completed throughout my last semester. Here, I explore issues of ancestry, family lineage, migration, cultural memory, and identity. Tracing my own family history through the stories of my grandmother and the Queen Mothers I met in Ghana, I use the experience of gathering fabric scraps and pins from my grandmother’s sewing room as an act of remembrance to produce an interwoven surface of ideas and histories through painting, installation, and elements of performance. I am interested in telling the stories of the underrepresented, engaging the lives, history, and lived experiences of the African Diaspora and our connections with one another throughout all societies and cultures.