The Calling: Hoodoo's communion with the ancestors
Opening Reception Recap (Delta Arts Center)
After 13 years of developing his image-making practice, North Carolina based cultural worker and photographer Phillip Loken’s first solo exhibition, The Calling: Hoodoo’s Communion With The Ancestors, gives appreciation to those who no longer walk among us but remain present and near.
Through pigment-printed digital photographs on archival paper and quotes from Zora Neale Hurston’s 1931 article Hoodoo In America this exhibition honors a Black spiritual tradition that has traveled and remained through generations of practitioners.
On April 13th, 2024, Loken documented and participated in The Calling, an inaugural Hoodoo Homecoming organized by the Twin Hoodoo Muthas Saint Xolani and Jeida K. Storey. Black Power, resistance, and liberation were summoned and realized by the 26 Black people dressed in white who gathered at the Eno River in Durham, North Carolina to be in community, commune with their ancestors, and practice traditional Afrikan and Black geographically-American spirituality.
In the words of Saint Xolani themself, "Hoodoo is a Black folk spiritual-medicinal tradition formed from the wisdom retained from the Atlantic slave trade and cultivated by Black-Americans and Afro-Diasporic peoples. It centers a Black person's humanity and wholeness. It reinforces their identity through the support of God, the ancestors, the land, and community."
There was laughter and tears, there was celebration, the ancestors were honored and time was escaped.
Loken received the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library 2024 Collections Award for this body of work, allowing the university to add a collection of prints from this series to their archive.
During a moment we shared, Jeida blessed me with a message that I always subconsciously knew, but having it verbalized gave it a new strength. She told me with any image I make, any person I make images of, I am documenting the lineage of that African person as well.
That statement is in all bold at the front of my brain now whenever the shutter button on any of my cameras is pressed.
It feels amazing to know my ancestors are present, proud, and will continue to guide me.
All of my ancestors (as a direct descendant and communal descendant), especially the Maroons of Jamaica, stand strong beside me.
*The language used in the quotes from Zora Neale Hurston’s article included in this exhibition are not gender-inclusive but are quoted unedited to maintain the historical accuracy of her writing.
Digital Photographs
All images made in 2024
(Email PL@PLStudio.xyz to see all of the images in this series)
