Flux Projects Celebrates Juneteenth With Charmaine Minniefield's “Remembrance as Resistance”

ATLANTA (April 27, 2021) – On Saturday, June 19, in commemoration of Juneteenth, Flux Projects will present Charmaine Minniefield’s Remembrance as Resistance: Preserving Black Narratives in its entirety. Honoring recently discovered unmarked graves in the African American Burial Grounds of Atlanta’s Historic Oakland Cemetery, Remembrance as Resistance was intended to be an in-person event last year. Postponed for the pandemic, it was released as a series of virtual programs and events. Flux Projects remains committed to launching the site specific, physical installation on Juneteenth this year, and continuingthrough July 11.

Through this project, Minniefield celebrates the Ring Shout, a traditional African American worship and gathering practice, whose origins in West African ritual and ceremony predate slavery. Minniefield explores evidence of its survival in contemporary dance, music and spoken word as testament to the resilience of a people.

The project features a replica of a Praise House, a small wooden structure used for worship, and includes a multimedia installation of the Ring Shout with video projections on the interior of the building and a sound installation emanating from the structure over the newly restored African American Burial Grounds.

To ensure the safety of audience members during COVID, a limited number of people will be admitted into the Praise House at a time, and masks will be required for entry. People are encouraged to reserve a time for viewing, and reservations will be prioritized over walkups. Free tickets for entry will be available on the Flux Projects website beginning May 17th through the end of the installation.

Remembrance as Resistance is presented in collaboration with Historic Oakland Foundation and the City of Atlanta. The project is accompanied by a free digital tour experience, developed by Historic Oakland Foundation in partnership with Flux Projects, Charmaine Minniefield, and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Historic Oakland Foundation will also offer free tours of the African American Burial Grounds during the run of the project. More information is available at www.oaklandcemetery.com.

Virtual programs from 2020 are available to view on the Flux Projects website.

The project is supported by Mailchimp and by grants from National Black Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. It is being constructed with support from C.D. Moody Construction, Point South Architecture & Design, and Shear Structural. During her research for the project, Minniefield has been an artist in residence at Emory University’s Rose Library.

About Charmaine Minniefield

The work of artist-activist, Charmaine Minniefield preserves Black narratives as a radical act of social justice. Firmly rooted in womanist social theory and ancestral veneration, her work draws from indigenous traditions as seen throughout Africa and the Diaspora, to explore African and African-American history, memory and ritual as an intentional push back against erasure. Her creative practice is community-based as her research and resulting bodies of work often draw from the physical archives as she excavates the stories of African-American women-led resistance and spirituality and power.

Minniefield’s recent public works which include projection mapping and site-specific installation, insight dialogue around race, class and power. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, she incorporates other art forms to virtually bridge the past to the present. Recent projects include the mounting of "Remembrance as Resistance" during the 2018 Symposium on Race and Reconciliation presented by her alma mater, Agnes Scott College, which opened with the removal of two Confederate monuments from campus grounds and closed with the work as backdrop for the closing talk by Alice Walker on art and activism.

Minniefield’s work is featured in a number of public and private collections, and as a muralist, her walls can be seen throughout the City of Atlanta and beyond. She was honored by Mercedes Benz as a part of their Greatness Lives Here campaign. She and her recent mural in Brooklyn, depicting women who shaped the future, is featured in the 2020 US Census commercial. Minniefield recently served as the Stuart A. Rose Library artist-in-residence at Emory through a collaboration with Flux Projects.

About Flux Projects:

Flux Projects produces temporary public art projects that connect and grow artists and audiences in Atlanta through the creative power of place. These projects disrupt the everyday and inspire imagination, wonder and awe. They support artists to take risks and grow their practices whether they are internationally acclaimed or producing their first public work. They create communal spaces for people of all walks of life. And they bring a location’s past, present and future into conversation in ways that open our eyes to new possibilities. Flux Projects gives art the space to transform.www.fluxprojects.org

Flux Projects is funded by Mailchimp, the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the Fulton County Arts Council under the guidance of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, Georgia Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the LUBO Fund, the EMSA Fund, and The Imlay Foundation, as well as other corporate and individual supporters.