For the Breathing Panels series (2015–ongoing), Nari Ward punctured Kongo cosmograms—African prayer symbols composed of a diamond bisected by a cross—into large sheets of copper. Ward first came across this pattern in holes cut into the floorboards of the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, an eighteenth century church founded by formerly enslaved people, which served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The holes allowed people fleeing to the North to breathe as they hid under the church’s floor; they also constitute a reminder of African cultural practices that the transatlantic slave trade sought to erase. Footprints subtly mark the surfaces of some Breathing Panels, echoing patterns of escape and migration. See the artwork in person at CAMH.
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Nari Ward, Resonance, from the Breathing Circles series, 2018. Oak, copper sheet, copper nails, and darkening patina. Collection Erica Gervais and Ted Pappendick.
