Kuba Power, 2026
Malene Djenaba Barnett
Kuba Power, 2026
Stoneware
63 x 50.25 in
The phrase Black Power appears across small ceramic tiles arranged in a rhythm that recalls the geometry of Kuba cloth, a powerful handwoven textile tradition. The repeated words shift between readable text and pattern, turning language into a woven field of affirmation.
The work honors Kuba as a symbol of creative liberation, framing Black power as something carried through many hands, many marks, and many repetitions—strength embedded in both pattern and community.
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.
