Ancestral Threads

Arianna Barley, Wabwila Mugala,  

Semoria Mosley

The three woman show features the works of  recent MFA (Master of Fine Arts) graduates, Arianna Barley from the Arizona State University,  Semoria Mosley from the University of Arizona, and Wabwila Mugala, from Arizona State University. The Ancestral Threads Exhibition shows multi-media works informed by African Diaspora culture, identity, mysticism and colonization repercussions. 

Arianna Barley’s art is rooted in the material culture and histories of the Black Southern United States.  

“I create mixed-media textile works and installations that explore and question ways of knowing.  Through my practice, I utilize things passed down as tools for understanding and examining our relationship to ancestral and shared histories.”

Semoria Mosley’s combination of video performance and photography interrogates the relationship between habit and habitat through vehicles of shared memory. 

“My curiosity leads me to traditional media techniques and contemporary image-making. Using practice-based research to explore the complexities of culture, identity, and environments within African diaspora communities, I focus on uncovering daily nuance and mysticism of Black Americans in the Deep South.”

Wabwila Mugala is a Zambian born interdisciplinary artist with a focus on print processes grounded in design and textiles. Her practice engages with the call-and-response within the African diaspora through her own visual glossary functioning as pattern, design and language.  She has been featured in Southwest Contemporary Magazine: Radical Futures (Volume 10) and AIGA Charlotte.