Ayana V. Jackson, Adelita: She was not only Brave she was Beautiful, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim.
Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present I Would Follow Her by Ground and Sea, an exhibition by Ayana V. Jackson. Bringing together key bodies of work from across her practice, the exhibition traces Jackson’s sustained engagement with the figure of the woman as a site of memory, power, and futurity.
On the gallery’s lower ground floor, the presentation centers on three major pieces from From the Deep. First shown in 2023 in the artist’s critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., this series is inspired by Drexciya, the Detroit-based techno duo active in the early 1990s who developed a sonic and mythological universe centered on an underwater civilization inhabited by the descendants of pregnant African women thrown overboard, or who leapt into the ocean, during the transatlantic slave trade. Drexciya’s founding myth reclaims the abyss not as a site of annihilation, but of transformation.
Drawing from this speculative lineage, Jackson constructed a sacred aquatopia in which the images ask us to reckon with the brutality that consigned millions to the sea, while simultaneously envisioning a world shaped by powerful and resilient women. Using her own body as both subject and conduit, Jackson stages an embodied inquiry into historical absence, loss, and survival, inviting a reversal of the gaze that asks what these submerged histories might see when they look back at us.
In August 2025, two years after the debut of From the Deep, Jackson’s work was explicitly cited by the current American administration in a publicly circulated list of artworks deemed objectionable, following official statements accusing the Smithsonian institutions of being “out of control”. This recent episode underscores the urgency and continued relevance of Jackson’s practice—one that insists on history precisely where it is contested, uncomfortable, or deliberately suppressed.
Upstairs, the exhibition expands to include works from Dear Sarah (2016) and You Forgot to See Me Coming (2023), two series that further articulate Jackson’s commitment to revisiting history through performative self-representation. In Dear Sarah, Jackson examines the fragmented identity of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a nineteenth-century figure enslaved by the Kingdom of Dahomey who later became the protégée and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Each photograph navigates the shifting names and roles imposed upon Sarah throughout her life, prompting reflection on the violence and contradictions embedded in acts of naming, protection, and assimilation.
Facing these works are photographs from You Forgot to See Me Coming, a series developed during Jackson’s residency at the Alturas Foundation. Here, the artist explores the intersections of Black and Indigenous women’s histories within early twentieth-century armed conflicts, notably the Mexican Revolution. Drawing on archival references and period characterization, the works introduce levity as a strategic and disarming force. By invoking figures such as Carmen Robles—an Afro-descendant colonel who fought alongside the Zapatista army—Jackson confronts entrenched racist historiographies and the broader tendency to overlook women’s fundamental roles in liberation movements.
By fighting representation with representation itself, Ayana V. Jackson reminds us that art remains a vital vessel of resistance, and that memory—however painful or unresolved—must continue to be activated, defended, and reimagined.
