Spiritual Practice as Resistance
Spirituality as Resistance emerged as Artist Journey Allen discovered silence as a pathway into reflection, ancestral remembrance, and spiritual inquiry. Through sculptural masks, ritual adornment, and reclaimed materials, the work explores healing, memory, and transformation through the visual language of African diasporic traditions. Rooted in the ceremonial influences of Mardi Gras Indians, Yoruba spirituality, and Egungun ancestral masking practices, the project considers how art can serve as ceremony, cultural preservation, and communal offering in a world shaped by erasure, displacement, and forgetting.
Artist Journey Allen pictured above with The Genesis Piece of the collection, "Obatala, The Biggest Big Chief" 2025
Ancestral Memory. Diasporic Continuity. Healing Through Collective Activation.
"Olokun: Keeper of the Ocean Floor" 2026
Process video featuring the artist's sun, Sekou-Ade
DEBUTING
Summer 2027
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.