Video Gallery: Sola

Sola

Yoruba, pronounced “Sho-lah.”

In the Yoruba culture, children are purposely bestowed names with intention at birth, and I was delighted to find that they are not gender-specific.  The majority of the people that were enslaved were young.  Imagining how they may have felt–having been separated from their families and their home–and what they may have remembered about their homeland, I created this young child with the forlorn expression.  On her right side, there are “memories” of home, iconic images in bas relief of African wildlife and landscape.