2024-2025 Creative Assembly artist-in-residence Carl Harrison Jr. wrote an essay reflecting on his experiences engaging with the works and themes of the recent exhibition New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations across various events at the museum, including July’s Salon Supper Club. Read the full essay below.

Spirit in Motion: Activating the Contemporary African Masquerade

On a warm evening in June, the sacred temple of the New Orleans Museum of Art filled with sound. Harmonies from Nu Nation Choir rose into the Great Hall, climbing high above carved woodcuts, reverberating against the walls, and pouring into the museum like incense. The masquerade figures didn’t move, but they pulsed. Or maybe it was us who moved through them.

In New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations, the mask is not an artifact. It is an invitation. The exhibition doesn’t simply offer a visual survey of contemporary masquerade practice across West Africa; it insists that these traditions are still alive, still evolving, and still speaking. What I witnessed over the summer—through three transformative events—was nothing less than a decolonization of museum space, achieved not through institutional mandate but through the primal power of Black cultural expression.

Ancestral Collaboration

Curated in partnership with the Musée des Civilisations noires in Dakar, the exhibition highlights four contemporary artists: Chief Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa, Sheku “Goldenfinger” Fofanah, David Sanou, and Hervé Youmbi. Their work breathes new life into inherited forms. These masks, garments, and sculptural ensembles draw on generations of sacred knowledge, but they are not bound by history. They look back with reverence, while reaching forward with vision.

This spirit of collaboration between artist and ancestor, tradition and innovation, Dakar and New Orleans echoes my own work. One of the most resonant moments for me came during a gallery talk with Erika N. Witt, curator of SUNOMA. She shared that her favorite piece in the show was a tribute to the artist’s father. Erika had recently lost her mother. I had recently completed a tribute to my own father: Remembrance for Thunderhead.

A Car Becomes an Offering

Remembrance for Thunderhead is a backyard installation centered around a 1965 Chevrolet Impala, my father’s car. We had once planned to restore it together. After his passing, it sat untouched for years, metal oxidizing, memories settling like dust on the dashboard. For the piece, I brought the car to The Front, an artist-run gallery space, and covered it in purple flowers, his favorite color. It became both memorial and garden, a place for bees to pollinate and for grief to blossom into something communal.

When Erika spoke of her emotional response to the father-tribute masquerade, I felt that deep, wordless recognition that only comes when two stories are humming in the same key. Here was the mechanism I would witness again and again: how personal loss, transformed through ritual and community witness, becomes collective healing. The masquerade artists understand this ancient alchemy. So do we.

Sacred Grounds, Sacred Sounds

During the Juneteenth celebration, Nu Nation Choir gathered not in the African Masquerade gallery, but beneath the monumental presence of John T. Scott’s Blues Poem for the Urban Landscape in the museum’s Great Hall. The walls were alive with his carved woodcut prints, each one a rhythmic echo of New Orleans itself. Known globally for his ability to translate Black movement, music, and struggle into visual form, Scott’s work created the perfect container for the voices that followed.

As the choir sang (young, radiant, and rooted) their sound reverberated throughout the museum. The marble floors amplified every note; the high ceilings stretched each harmony into something cathedral-vast. I believe, truly, that their voices traveled through walls, stairwells, and ceilings, reaching the masquerade exhibition like a spiritual telegram. It was a call and response across time, media, and meaning. The voices of today were in conversation with ancestral presence.

And in that convergence of Black sound, Black form, Black spirit, I felt what it means to awaken a space. Not just to occupy it, but to enliven it. To allow sound and memory to stir the stillness. This is how museums cease to be mausoleums: when the living breath of community fills the spaces between objects, when performance recontextualizes display, when the past is invited to dance again in the present.

The Juneteenth event established the template. What followed was its fuller expression.

Spirit Enters the Supper Club

The Salon Supper Club arrived like a prophecy fulfilled. In July, as summer deepened, NOMA’s galleries transformed into a living extension of the New African Masquerades exhibition. The same institutional walls that had contained Scott’s prints for Juneteenth now prepared to hold something even more radical: a full-scale ritual of cultural activation.

After a curator-led tour by Dr. Amanda Maples, guests gathered in the Great Hall for the evening’s opening invocation. Sunni Patterson, poet and priestess, took the stage alongside live drumming from the Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective. As she recited, a dancer moved in harmony, earthbound and ancestral. The polished museum floor became a sacred ground, her bare feet finding rhythm against marble that had never before felt such intentional movement.

Sunni’s words braided the past with the present as she called forth the ancestors: “Come by here where you are welcomed / Come by here where you are a bridge / Where you carry us over tumultuous times.” Her voice carried the weight of generations, invoking those “who can make lightning strike with the flick of a skirt,” those with “sunlight in your fingertips.” As the drumming intensified, she declared: “We are stars / Magnets of wonder / With thunder in our feet / Lightning in our eyes / The mystery is that there is really / No mystery at all.”

We were surrounded by Dapper Bruce Lafitte’s A Time Before Katrina, a sprawling series of drawings chronicling pre-Katrina New Orleans in bold, unfiltered memory. The installation, notably the first by NOMA’s new chief curator Anne Collins Smith—the first Black chief curator in the museum’s history—felt resonant in its placement. Projects, parades, bands, and neighborhoods now lost or transformed lined the walls, offering witness. The smell of sage and sweetgrass drifted through the gallery as Sunni’s invocation, the dancer’s body, and Lafitte’s visual archive merged into a ritual of remembrance and resistance.

Like the artists in New African Masquerades, who pour libations before beginning their work, we began with our own: a poem, a drumbeat, a movement, a collective breath. The Western museum’s insistence on distance—do not touch, do not speak, do not participate—dissolved completely.

From Gallery to Table: A Taste of West Africa and New Orleans

Chef Serigne Mbaye of Dakar NOLA, the 2024 James Beard Award winner for Best New Restaurant, curated a menu that was both celebration and ceremony. His culinary lineage, rooted in Senegal, shaped in New Orleans, offered a taste of the sacred, seasoned with memory. Each dish functioned as edible cultural mapping, creating flavor bridges between West African street vendors and Gulf Coast kitchens.

Like the masquerade artists who blend ancestral techniques with contemporary vision, Mbaye operates as a cultural translator, his kitchen a site of diasporic reunion. His presence at NOMA wasn’t just catering—it was continuation. The same spirit animating the masks and sculptures was now seasoning the food, transforming sustenance into sacrament.

The aroma of cumin and scotch bonnet peppers filled the air as servers moved through the crowd with signature dishes that told stories with every bite:

• Poulet Yassa: The evening’s revelation. Marinated chicken steeped in onion, mustard, and lemon—a Senegalese classic Mbaye created especially for the evening. The first bite delivered the sharp brightness of Dijon cutting through tender meat, followed by the slow burn of scotch bonnet heat. This wasn’t fusion; it was homecoming. Guests paused mid-conversation, eyes widening at flavors that felt both foreign and familiar, like hearing a half-remembered lullaby sung in an ancestor’s voice.
• Thieboudienne: Mbaye’s signature Jollof rice dish, crowned with Gulf redfish and finished with lemon beurre blanc, embodied the exhibition’s central theme. Here was the rice that survived the Middle Passage, transformed by Senegalese hands, prepared by New Orleans technique. Each grain carried the weight of migration—voluntary and forced—while the redfish spoke of Louisiana waters. The beurre blanc wasn’t betrayal but translation, French technique serving West African soul.
• Shrimp and Okra Stew: Perhaps the most profound dish of the evening. Mbaye explained that in Burkina Faso, this combination appears at funerary rites, a way of honoring the departed through communal nourishment. In Louisiana, shrimp and okra anchor countless family tables, Sunday dinners, and celebrations. To taste this dish in the museum, surrounded by art about ancestral connection, was to understand how food functions as portal. The okra’s subtle earthiness grounded the sweet Gulf shrimp, while the tomato-based broth sang with garlic, thyme, and memory. This was grief transformed into sustenance, loss alchemized into love.
• Beef Suya: Street vendor poetry made edible. The meat arrived fragrant with groundnut spice blend, charred edges giving way to smoky tenderness. Guests who had never tasted suya found themselves transported to Dakar markets, while those who grew up with these flavors felt the comfort of recognition. The spice blend—complex, layered, impossible to decode completely—demonstrated what the masquerade artists know: some knowledge can only be transmitted through direct experience.

The smaller plates continued the cultural conversation: Black-eyed Pea Salad that bridged West African protein traditions with New Orleans produce; Ndambé on Ciabatta that put Senegalese beans in dialogue with European bread; Pastels/Meat Pies that could have been lifted from a Dakar street corner or a New Orleans corner store. Each bite dissolved the artificial boundaries between “authentic” and “fusion,” revealing instead the continuous flow of diasporic creativity.

The Banana Puff-Puffs with Caramel Sauce served as sweet benediction, the fried dough’s pillowy texture giving way to caramel that tasted like childhood distilled. Guests lingered over these, reluctant to let the meal end, understanding somehow that they had participated in something larger than dinner.

At the bar, mixologist Deniseea Head (a.k.a. Chicken and Champagne) had created liquid masquerades of her own. Her cocktails weren’t just drinks but ritualistic offerings, each one a meditation on identity and celebration:

• Name Behind the Masq: This was the evening’s most complex creation, a cocktail that revealed itself in layers like the masquerade regalia it honored. The first sip delivered bright mango sweetness, followed by tamarind’s tangy complexity, then lime’s clean acidity, honey’s floral depth, and finally whiskey’s warm finish. Like looking at a masquerade costume, each layer added meaning to the whole. The drink’s amber color shifted in the light, mimicking the metallic threads and beadwork of the exhibition pieces. Guests found themselves slowing down, discovering new flavors with each sip, understanding that this drink—like the masks themselves—rewarded patience and attention.
• Chain of Skill: Head’s tribute to New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions, this banana rum julep arrived as visual spectacle and gustatory delight. The muddled banana released its perfume before the first sip, while the rum carried the warmth of Caribbean sun. Fresh mint provided the cooling counterpoint, each sip balancing tropical fruit with herbal brightness. The drink acknowledged Mardi Gras as African diasporic celebration, connecting New Orleans masking traditions to their West African roots through liquid storytelling.
• The Healer: Perhaps the most spiritually resonant offering, this ginger- and pineapple-infused mocktail functioned as genuine libation. The ginger arrived as gentle fire, warming the throat without overwhelming, while pineapple provided tropical sweetness that recalled both West African abundance and Caribbean survival. Those who chose not to drink alcohol found themselves fully included in the ritual aspects of the evening, understanding that healing—the drink’s promise—came not from intoxication but from intention. Parents shared sips with children, elders nodded approval, and the designated drivers felt no sacrifice in their choice.

Head had designed these cocktails as liquid masquerades, each one a meditation on identity and celebration that bartenders executed with precision. She understood that in Black cultural tradition, the person who controls the drinks controls the spiritual temperature of the gathering. Her cocktail recipes weren’t just beverages but mood-setters, conversation starters, and ritual objects that helped transform museum-goers into community members.

The evening pulsed with live music from the AllStar Band (my cousin Asata Renay’s voice weaving through the space like silver thread), DJ sets from DJ Ojay, and dancing that brought everyone onto the museum floor. Bodies moved between sculptures, around display cases, transforming negative space into positive energy.

By night’s end, the Great Hall was alive with swag surfing, laughter, and layered memory. The same sacred space that held John T. Scott’s prints for Juneteenth and Dapper Bruce Lafitte’s drawings for the supper club had become something more: a site of ritual transformation. We had successfully colonized the museum with our own sense of the sacred.

The Mechanism of Awakening

What happened across these three events reveals something crucial about how cultural spaces transform. The mechanism is neither mysterious nor accidental. It requires:

Community Witness: The presence of people who understand the cultural codes being activated. Nu Nation Choir didn’t simply perform; they channeled. The supper club guests didn’t simply attend; they participated in ritual.

Sensory Saturation: Sound, smell, taste, and movement working together to overwhelm the museum’s institutional sterility. When all the senses are engaged, the space becomes lived-in rather than observed.

Ancestral Invocation: Whether through Sunni Patterson’s libations, the masquerade artists’ traditional practices, or my own father-tribute installation, calling on ancestral presence transforms individual expression into collective memory.

Cultural Translation: Each event required artists and curators who could speak multiple languages—the language of institutional spaces and the language of community gathering. This bilingual fluency is essential for any successful cultural activation.

These are the tools for awakening museum spaces everywhere. They point toward a new model of cultural institution: not the neutral container for objects, but the active participant in community ritual and healing.

Spirit in Motion

We often think of museums as places where objects go to rest. But what this exhibition proves—and what every community-centered gathering quietly affirms—is that when care, culture, and collaboration align, the spirit does not rest. It stirs. It sings. It feasts. It remembers. It reclaims.

To awaken the masquerade is to step into the current of something far older and more alive than any one of us. It is to embody motion. To invite the past to dance again in the present. And to offer the future something it desperately needs: rootedness, ritual, and the deep knowing that we’ve always been here.

But more than that, it’s to provide a blueprint for cultural workers everywhere who understand that true decolonization happens not through policy but through practice. Through the radical act of making institutional spaces serve community needs. Through the ancient technology of gathering, ritual, and collective memory-making.

The masquerade teaches us that transformation requires more than good intentions. It requires the courage to move, to sound, to taste, to touch. It requires us to become the activation we want to see.

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Carl Harrison Jr. is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and cultural steward based in New Orleans. A Southern Foodways Alliance fellow, his work centers ancestral memory, foodways, and community-based ritual, most recently through Eve’s Garden, The Buzz of Saint Roch, and Remembrance for Thunderhead. He is co-founder of St. Roch Community Garden and a member of The Front artist collective.