First presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in 2023 and toured by International Arts & Artists, From the Deep is Ayana V. Jackson’s first major institutional exhibition. Drawing on the mythic underwater world imagined by Detroit techno duo Drexciya, Jackson creates a feminist, Pan-African aquatopia inhabited by water spirits rooted in African and Afro-Atlantic traditions. Through photography, immersive video, animation, and installation, the exhibition transforms the Atlantic Ocean from a site of historical trauma associated with the slave trade into a realm of myth, memory, and speculative fiction.
Jackson’s Afrofuturist practice challenges the colonial gaze and reimagines narratives of the Black diaspora, often using photography to explore the complex relationships between history, identity, and representation. In From the Deep, ancestry, resilience, and the enduring afterlives of the Middle Passage converge in an immersive environment that invites reflection and repair. By bringing together historical references, spiritual traditions, and speculative futures, Jackson offers a new vision of the Atlantic as a space of possibility, connection, and transformation.
Exhibition dates: November 19, 2026 – March 29, 2027
Travelling to: The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit MI, April 26, 2027–August 9, 2027
