Ifé Franklin

Ifé Franklin’s practice involves several genres of artmaking inspired by slave narratives, dreams, dance, song, and visions. Over the last decade she has been developing The Indigo Project which honors the lives and history of formerly enslaved Africans/African-Americans who labored to produce materials that generated the wealth of nations. At the center are Franklin’s Ancestor Slave Cabins which often incorporate Adire fabric, an indigo-dyed cotton cloth decorated using a resist technique from the Yoruba culture. These assemblages are built in collaboration with the community and cultivate connections that promote understanding and healing from the hard history of enslavement. In 2018 Franklin published, The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae, a fictional account of her great-grandmother’s escape from slavery to freedom. The work was adapted into a performance piece and a short film in 2021.

Franklin’s work has been exhibited at The Slave Dwellings Project in South Carolina, the North Charleston Arts Festival, and throughout the Greater Boston area. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Fitchburg MA, UMass Boston, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture inWashington D.C.

www.ifearts.com

This bio/description was originally published in 2022 and updated in 2022. For more current information, please refer to the award recipient's website (if provided).