Orisha Mask Project: Spiritual Practice as Resistance
The Orisha Mask Project: Spirituality as Resistance is an evolving body of sculptural mask work exploring healing, remembrance, ancestral memory, and transformation through the visual language of African diasporic traditions. Rooted in the ceremonial influence of Mardi Gras Indians, Yoruba spirituality, and Egungun masquerade, the work investigates how art can function as sacred vessel, cultural archive, and communal offering.
Ancestral Memory. Diasporic Continuity. Healing Through Collective Activation.
The Orisha Mask Project is an evolving body of contemporary sculptural and socially engaged art practice that emerged through a period of deep reflection, silence, and spiritual inquiry during Journey Allen’s residency at A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans. Through hand-built masks, assemblage, repurposed materials, and immersive visual storytelling, the work explores protection, transformation, ancestral memory, and the enduring relationship between spirit and material.
Influenced by the intricate adornment traditions of Mardi Gras Indians and the ceremonial masquerade practices found throughout the African diaspora, the work honors the ways ancestral knowledge has survived across generations through ritual, creativity, and collective remembrance. The foundational materials of abandoned political signage, discarded materials, flour-based paper mache, fabric, paint, and found objects are transformed into sacred visual language, exploring how what society has overlooked or discarded can become vessel, offering, and testimony.
While rooted in Black cultural traditions and diasporic spiritual practices, the project extends an open invitation for viewers of all backgrounds to reflect on the rituals, symbols, and practices that sustain their own healing, identity, and connection to something greater than themselves.
Through sculpture, storytelling, procession, sound, and community engagement, The Orisha Mask Project explores spirituality not as escape, but as resistance: a force capable of preserving memory, restoring humanity, and imagining new possibilities for collective healing and liberation.