Sacred Currents
Monday – Saturday
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Sunday
11:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
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Click on each calendar entry below or check out our full list at lib.nova.edu/exhibits for event and exhibit descriptions and registration information. All events are free and open to the public.
Sacred Currents: A Diasporic Renaissance is an evocative celebration of Pan-African spirituality and creativity as they weave through the African Diaspora, a testament to the unbroken thread of ancestral wisdom that has crossed waters and reshaped worlds.
This exhibition bridges the nostalgic past and the speculative future, harmonizing ethereal realities where traditions transform through innovation, and art becomes a vessel for the sacred. This renaissance represents an ongoing continuum—where ancestral wisdom is not merely revived but continuously reinterpreted.
It is the story of how Black spirituality, religion, and artistry have transformed, adapting to new geographies, histories, and challenges while holding fast to their core essence. Rooted in ancient cosmologies and rituals yet daringly reimagined for today, Sacred Currents showcases the living, breathing dynamism of a spiritual and artistic ecosystem that has never stopped flowing.
The works featured in this exhibition—spanning painting, sculpture, textile, photography, digital art, installation, and performance—speak to the longevity, ingenuity, resilience, and boundless vision of the African Diaspora. From the sacred rhythms of traditional rituals to boldly innovative expressions of identity and liberation, these pieces transcend time and geography, immersing audiences in the fluidity of spirit and creativity.
Sacred Currents is a call to reflect, reconnect, and reimagine. It invites audiences to step into the stream of this renaissance and witness how contemporary artists channel ancestral memory, not as an act of nostalgia but as a source of empowerment, healing, and cultural reclamation.
Here, the sacred informs the creative, and the creative informs the sacred—an unending conversation across generations and continents. This exhibition offers a sanctuary for reflection, a celebration of identity and community, and a space for imagining new possibilities of cultural and religious liberation. Through the vivid colors, rich symbols, and transcendent energies of these works,
Sacred Currents affirms that the African Diaspora’s sacred arts are not relics of the past but the lifeblood of a shared future.
--Co-Curators Vanessa Charlot & Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels
Vanessa Charlot
Vanessa Charlot is an award-winning photographic artist, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media. Her work transcends traditional boundaries, blending documentary photography, filmmaking, and interdisciplinary research to explore the complex intersectionality of race, politics, culture, and gender.
Charlot's artistic practice intertwined with the exploration of Black life, compelling viewers to confront and reimagine the often-distorted narratives that shape perceptions of Black bodies.
Her photographs and films have garnered international acclaim, with works commissioned by The New York Times, Gucci, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Apple, New York Magazine, Buzzfeed, Artnet News, and The Washington Post, among others. In November 2022, Charlot's work graced the cover of The Washington Post’s Photo Issue, further cementing her influence in contemporary visual culture. Charlot’s career spans the U.S., the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels
Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and Co-Curator of Sacred Currents: A Diasporic Renaissance, her first exhibition.
She completed her B.A. in Africana Studies at Stanford University and received her M.A. in Religion and her Ph.D. in African & African American Studies at Harvard University.
Daniels’ first book (Art of the Healing Gods, Duke University Press 2026) is a comparative religion project that examines sacred art objects used in healing ceremonies of Haiti and Congo-Kinshasa. Her work has been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Africana Religions, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, and the Journal of Haitian Studies.
Daniels currently serves as a Leadership Council Member for the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association (ADRSA) and as Co Vice President for KOSANBA, the Scholarly Association for the Study of Haitian Vodou.
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Abeni's Song
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ISBN: 9781250825834Publication Date: 2023-07-25Abeni's Song by award-winning author P. Djèlí Clark is the enchanting beginning of an epic West African and African Diaspora-inspired fantasy adventure for middle-grade readers about a reluctant apprentice to magic and the stolen villagers she sets out to save. -
Banning Black gods: law and religions of the African diaspora
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ISBN: 9780271089645Publication Date: 2021Examines the global legal challenges faced by adherents of the most widely practiced religions of the African diaspora in the twenty-first century, including Santeria/Lucumi, Haitian Vodou, Candomble , Palo Mayombe, Umbanda, Islam, Rastafari, Obeah, and Voodoo. -
Barracoon
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ISBN: 9780062748225Publication Date: 2018-05-08A newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade--abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. -
Blackbird
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ISBN: 9780271095615Publication Date: 2023-11-14From the beginning, the Beatles acknowledged in interviews their debt to Black music, apparent in their covers of and written original songs inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, and other giants of R&B. Blackbird goes deeper, appreciating unacknowledged forerunners, as well as Black artists whose interpretations keep the Beatles in play. Drawing on interviews with Black musicians and using the song "Blackbird" as a touchstone, Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith tell a new history. -
Box of Bones: Book One
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ISBN: 9781732638846Publication Date: 2021-02-03When Black graduate student Lyndsey begins her dissertation work on a mysterious box that pops up during the most violent and troubled time in Africana history, she has no idea that her research will lead her on a phantasmagorical journey from West Philadelphia riots to Haitian slave uprisings. Wherever Lyndsey finds someone who has seen the Box, chaos ensues. Soon, even her own sanity falls into question. In the end, Lyndsey will have to decide if she really wants to see what's inside the Box of Bones. -
The Digital Black Atlantic
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ISBN: 9781452965314Publication Date: 2021-03-16How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production. -
Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas
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ISBN: 9781496235732Publication Date: 2023-06-01Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas explores spirit-based religious traditions across vast geographical and cultural expanses, including Canada, the United States, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile. Using interdisciplinary research methods, this collection of original perspectives breaks new ground by examining these traditions as typologically and historically related. -
Sankofa
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ISBN: 9781646220847Publication Date: 2021A woman wondering who she really is goes in search of a father she never knew—only to find something far more complicated than she ever expected—in this “stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong” (Time). Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. In her 40s, she has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother—the only parent who raised her—is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive... When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. -
The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)member
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ISBN: 9780807013878Publication Date: 2021An exploration of how engaging identity and cultural heritage can transform teaching and learning for Black women educators in the name of justice and freedom in the classroom In The Spirit of Our Work, Dr. Cynthia Dillard centers the spiritual lives of Black women educators and their students, arguing that spirituality has guided Black people throughout the diaspora. -
Spirit Service
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ISBN: 9780253061935Publication Date: 2022-06-07Known in the Dominican Republic and Togo as Vodu, in Benin as Vodún, and in Haiti as Vodou, West African religion has, for hundreds of years, served as a repository of sacred knowledge while simultaneously evolving in response to human experience and globalization. Spirit Service: Vodún and Vodou in the African Atlantic World explores this dynamic religion, its mobility, and its place in the modern world. By examining the systems--ritual practices, community-based spirit veneration, and spiritual means of securing opportunity and well-being--alongside the individuals who worship, this rich collection offers the first comprehensive ethnographic study of West African spirit service on a broad scale.
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Black Atlantic: on the Orixas routeThe waters of the Atlantic brought the slaves from Africa to Brazil, their bodies in chains but their souls inexorably tied to mother Africa. This Brazilian- made film takes us to both shores, to show how spiritual life, dance and song came with the captive people and took root in the new soil.
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The Black CandleA documentary about the struggle and triumph of African-American family, community, and culture, using Kwanzaa as a vehicle to celebrate the African-American experience.
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Fireburn the DocumentaryIn 1848 the current day US Virgin Islands were Danish territory and were called the Danish West Indies (DWI). On July 3, 1848 all enslaved in the DWI were emancipated and proclaimed free by the governor of the islands. However, 30 years later, the freed workers were still suffering under the oppressive rules of the landowners and government. The documentary features historians, cultural ambassadors and educators as they look at the folklore, art and history surrounding the Fireburn.
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The Garifuna JourneyA celebratory documentary, with engaging scenes of fishing, cooking, dancing, cassava preparation, thatching a temple, spiritual ritual, ritual music and dance all demonstrating the Garifuna link to the Carib-African past.
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The InheritancePennsylvania-born filmmaker Ephraim Asili has been exploring different facets of the African diaspora—and his own place within it—for nearly a decade. His feature-length debut, THE INHERITANCE, is a vibrant, engaging ensemble work that takes place almost entirely within the walls of a West Philadelphia house where a community of young people have come together to form a collective of Black artists and activists.
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James Baldwin: the price of the ticket.James Baldwin: the price of the ticket captures on film the passionate intellect and courageous writing of a man who was born black, impoverished, gay and gifted. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket uses striking archival footage to evoke the atmosphere of Baldwin's formative years - the Harlem of the 30s, his father's fundamentalist church and the émigré demimonde of postwar Paris.
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James Hemings: Ghost in America's KitchenThe life, contributions, and erasure of America's culinary founding father are explored by food historians, celebrated chefs, experts on race and the African American diaspora.
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Voices of the OrishasThis innovative ethnographic documentary demonstrates the survival and strength of the Yoruba cultural and religious heritage in the contemporary life of Caribbean African-Hispanics.
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Voodoo and the church in Haiti.Despite centuries of vigilant opposition from the Christian Church, Voodoo has flourished in Haiti and continues to be one of the strongest elements underlying Haitian culture. This film dispels Hollywood stereotypes and presents Voodoo as a belief system that has been passed down from African ancestor to slave to present day Haitian.
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Wade in the Water.Led by historical experts and community leaders in the BIPOC surfing movement, WADE IN THE WATER resurrects the thousand-year-old Black surfing tradition, stirring the next generation of Black surfers. The film explores the neglected history of Black surfing’s heritage by charting the origins of African aquatic culture and examining the evolution of Black surfing through the modern day.
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Samba On Your FeetThis documentary goes behind the scenes of Samba and Carnival's world in Rio de Janeiro to reveal the cultural clash that gave birth to a new tradition in South America. Haroldo Costa (Historian-Actor -Writer), narrates how African slaves' beliefs, mixed with Spanish Catholic traditions and Native influences crafted a remarkable fusion.
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