Grave Goods (2018)

This land art installation at Sandy Spring Museum, Sandy Spring•Maryland references the long standing tradition by slaves and their descendants of decorating graves to honor the dead. As part of a burial ritual rooted in Africa, mourners placed symbolic objects on a gravesite that were thought to embody the spirit of the deceased and keep their memory and legacy alive. Grave Goods commemorates a burial custom my grandmother told me about that was performed by older members of her family in Texas about the turn of the twentieth century.