Black Power Remains, 2026
Malene Djenaba Barnett
Black Power Remains, 2026
Stoneware
25 x 50 in
Made from recycled clay from earlier Black Power tiles, this work no longer carries the phrase on its surface, yet the material remembers. The traces of its former life linger in color, texture, and form. Black Power Remains suggests that even when words disappear, the power they held does not—it stays embedded in the matter, in the making, and in us.
Black Power Scripts
This series transforms the contemporary Adinkra alphabet—a symbolic writing system created by Dr. Charles M. Korankye—into sculptural declarations of Black liberation, carved into clay surfaces that recall the facades of Nubian and Hausa architecture where wisdom and protection have long been inscribed into walls.
Black Power Scripts turns clay into a language of remembrance and resistance. Each mural draws from these architectural lineages, where walls once held words of guidance and protection. Carved in this contemporary Adinkra script, the compositions echo the rhythms of Kuba and Kente cloth, translating ancestral form into new declarations of power.
These works build spaces of affirmation in a time of erasure—reminding us that Black power is self-defined, self-sustained, and carried within.
