Cultural Gallery
Provided by Angela Kashuba
This wooden replica of a Ukrainian house looks like the small house my great grandparents lived in as peasant farmers. Common in western Ukraine, these small houses were built of wood with thatched roofs. Sometimes the sides of the house would be covered in pressed clay and painted white or light blue. Windows were first made of ox bladder, and later of glass. A well would be nearby for drawing water, and stacks of wood would accumulate for cooking and heating. The family typically slept on platforms on top of clay or brick stoves where it was warm. Storks or white cranes symbolize family, so a crane or stork nesting on the roof was always good luck!
Provided by Vivian Tran
The image here is of a red envelope (pronounced “hong bao” 红包). Traditionally, in Chinese culture, we like to give these out during Chinese New Year, which originally honored deities and ancestors. Now, it is a way celebrate the Lunar New Year and to bring family together where we gift young children or unwed individuals with money in these red envelopes. In Chinese New Year celebrations, there’s typically extravagant red and gold decorations, dragons dancing, and lots of delicious foods (roasted pig, roasted duck, Fuji apples etc). Most of these dishes are prepared for special occasions only which makes Chinese New Year very special to me!
Provided by Valeria Laboy Collazo
The guiro is a Latin American percussion instrument that’s consists of hollow gourd with parallel notches. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches. It is commonly used in Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Latin countries in genres of music such as son, trova, and salsa. Much like maracas the guiro is played typically by the singer. There are many variations of the guiro (Colombia-guacharaca, Brazil-reco-reco) due to the history of these countries. It is believed that this instrument originated in Africa and was brought over to Latin America and Caribbean by African slaves.
Provided by Aleksandra Skranja
Face Jugs were said to have been created for two purposes. They were used as grave marker for African American slaves. They were said to keep away evil spirits or the devil from the burial site. They were also said to be used to store things such as liquor or moonshine so the evil or scary-looking faces would deter children from drinking the contents. They have now become a quite popular form of collectible Folk art.
This distinctive type of ceramic face vessel first appeared in the American South in the mid-1800s. Jugs such as these are attributed to a small number of black slaves working as potters in the Edgefield District of South Carolina. None of these skilled potters have been identified by name and their inspiration for making face vessels is unknown. Scholars speculate that the vessels may have had religious or burial significance, or that they reflect the complex responses of people attempting to live and maintain their personal identities under harsh conditions. The earliest face vessels known to have been produced by white southern potters were probably not made until the end of the 1800s. White potters working in the Edgefield area in the mid-1800s may have seen the slave-made vessels and taken the idea with them as they moved out of South Carolina.
Provided by Nic Jimenez
Chichén Itzá was one of the most important city-states in pre-Hispanic America and is a seven wonder of the world. It is also one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico today. Chichén Itzá was a large pre-Columbian city built by the Maya people and one of the largest Maya cities. This picture was taken from the NE side of the pyramid.
Provided by Rada Zunich
This is a photo of a čutura my parents received for their wedding (white and red bottle with matching cups). The red čutura is from Serbia, given to us by our family still living there. The Slivovitz bottle (traditional Serbian drink) on the left, was distilled from a factory that was bombed during the war. The bottle with the red cap is from my family’s village – they distil their own Slivovitz.
Written and Submitted by Ty Chapman
“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” (Morrison, 1977)
The reason I chose this quote from Song of Solomon is because of Milkman’s journey. Milkman’s self-discovery of his family history and therefore himself left me both bereft and fulfilled. I felt a visceral pang emanating from the hole, both physical and metaphysical that exists in my family history. This is an inescapable fact that one must face when looking into Black genealogy. In this context, Black = derived from the enslaved population of Africans off the west coast of the continent posited in the continental United States. For a large part of my youth, it was as if history had no context where I could see my ancestors (albeit the mentioning of slavery), after reading Song of Solomon I started asking questions, these same questions led me to discover a fount of information on my ancestors who lived in Chillicothe, OH from the 1830s to present day. Pre-1830 the history becomes muddled in the miasma of slavery. My ancestors emigrated from Virginia, but the where and why are still unknown, perhaps they always will be, but there is still a lot to be learned from the absence of information, just as much perhaps if the information was served to me on a silver platter. After reading Song of Solomon, I felt as if I was Milkman and his journey was my journey. Fast forward a year and I am researching my family history, fighting back as far as I could to dig up information on my Black heritage. There’s a certain pain in fighting towards a destination that has a violent end. When I say violent I do not solely mean chattel slavery, but more so “The Door of no return”. I would love to know more, I have sat with the knowledge that my ancestors at one point or another were enslaved and to find tangible proof would be unsettling, but not the end of the world. The terror for me is the wall of water the Atlantic presents. Millions of Black bodies are strewn across the floor of the ocean. There is no realistic hope of tracing my history back to the point in time where my ancestors were not enslaved… almost as if that was the origin of their beings. The trip across the Atlantic was death to their former self’s (if not physical then metaphysical), they were recreated into something ostensibly “sub-human”. But I’ve resolved myself to press forward toward that door. Unwaveringly. Song of Solomon is my favorite novel because it’s generative. I read the words, they moved something inside me, and later I began to move toward a goal. That’s what literature (language) has the power to do when wielded properly (If you let it). There is an agency within capitulation and it is infinite in the right context.
“The Door of No Return” exists as the physical location(s) on the continent of Africa (most famously Elmina, Ghana) near the ports and forts which served as a holding place for a multitude of enslaved African individuals before they were shipped to the plantations and colonies of the ostensible New World. Although the physical Door appears to be inactive, unused, a relic of a time gone, the metaphysical manifestation of the Door lives on in the unconscious and conscious minds of the Black survivors of the forced African Diaspora. And with the rise of ancestry and genealogy services the pernicious pain now has a history of “hints” that build a broken path back toward the source of origin. But this increasingly illuminated path back towards The Door is fraught with danger. A path glittering like a sea kissed by sunlight, yet each step on the diamond-covered wave cuts like glass shards, and each step toward the horizon seems to push it further and further away. A wall made of trillions of gallons of water is placed between the few who can trace their lineage back to the seaports that their ancestors arrived at and the Door of No Return. A wall of water that has an unfathomable depth and density, one could move in it but never successfully orient themselves. This is the Door of No Return, the origin of the (re-)creation of Blackness in the Americas and the violent anti-Black hole it creates. Even in the attempt to remember, there is unspeakable pain and anguish.
Provided by Charlene Williams
This is a photo of a wooden wall quit that was designed by my husband Josh and myself and made by my husband. The wood has special meaning as it comes from wood from a “chicken house” or coop from my grandmother’s farm. My grandmother passed away several years ago. This quilt is a reminder to me of her resilience as she raised eight children by herself after her husband passed away unexpectedly. It is also a lovely reminder of all the great times I had as a kid with her on the farm.
Provided by Marshall Winget
The picture is a plaid from the Clan Ogilvie of Scotland. These clans were named for the lands they lived on and where they survived together throughout the years. The 500+ clans of Scotland have a sense of shared identity and any of these clans still organize gatherings to celebrate and bond over this shared history.
Provided by Sophia Mortha
Bangles are rigid bracelets made of metal, plastic, glass, gold or other material. In traditional South Asian culture these are worn for special occasions especially for weddings. They are usually colorful and make shimmering sounds. Bangles are used as accessories to add even more color and vibrancy to an already loud and proud culture. I love wearing my bangles because it automatically brings lots of nostalgia of festivities with crowds of friends and family, great music and really good food.
Provided by Christian Brown
These clothes are examples of fabric printed using the wax block printing method. This printing method is common across West Africa and particularly so in Ghana. This printing style was influenced by Indonesian and Dutch fabric production. Today wax prints are often s named by their designers after personalities, locations, buildings, and sayings. This method of dyeing fabric is labor-intensive and expensive because it requires layered applications of wax and then removing all the wax at the end. The result is stunningly colored patterns.
In Ghana, Krobo artists make beads using recycled bottles and jars ground to a fine glass powder. These beautiful glass beads are made in vertical molds. Each mold is filled with finely ground glass which is layered to create different colorful designs and then heated.