Introduction: Black Spiritual Ecologies
A three-artist exhibition on place, memory, and the practice of getting well
Presented at The Front, 4100 St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans’s Bywater
August 8 – September 6, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 8, 6–10 PM
Featured Artists: Ingrid Raphaël, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, and Anthony Peyton Young
Installation Artist, Déja Jones
“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?”
The Salt Eaters, p.1
In conversation with Toni Cade Bambara’s 1980 novel The Salt Eaters, spiritual in form and political in tone, the exhibition asks a question the novel poses in its opening line: "Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?". This is a central text to the framework of Black Spiritual Ecologies. Like the material and rememory of salt, Black Spiritual Ecologies layers Black spiritual meaning-making across past, present, and future ecologies. It invites artists and audiences alike into collaboration with materiality, placemaking, storytelling, and the global political conditions of Black life.
Introduction: Black Spiritual Ecologies presents Ingrid Raphaël, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, and Anthony Peyton Young. Focusing on the pillar of "place", each artist converses with the history and spiritual making of a place/places; whether on the ground or in the air. All places that refuse to be forgotten. As a collective story, the artists represent the layering of mediums as a methodology for meaning making. Individually, each artist’s work represents methods for getting well; through flying, portals, or community remembrance, Black life is honored.
“I was talking about time. It’s so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there.”
Beloved, p.43
“Rememory,” borrowed from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, anchors the curatorial approach. The exhibition frames the gallery as a rememory place, one where remembrance is central and slowness is required. Where what is is not quite what was, and where truth is spoken in the silence between salt, water, air, and mud.
Setting
They are laying on the ground, surrounded by people they know and do not know. It is broad daylight, people are walking by observing them lay but do not disturb. They are “in the rememory”. In between the salt, the water, the air, and the mud; a story is in their body trying to be told. Trying to make sense. A rememory place, where remembrance is central and slowness is required. A Black place. What is, is not the same. And people are adapting and speaking truth. In the silence there is a question…
A warm light is felt
Spirit: Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?
Them: I can not afford not to.
Spirit: You’ll have to choose, sweetheart. Choose your own cure.
Them: Choose?
Spirit: Let me help you get well.
Sleep riding, and sleep talking, not sure where they were. They felt themselves sinking.