monuments to our skies

About The Collection

Monuments to Our Skies is an amalgam of two new series that consider Black identity within the boundless frameworks of science, faith, and divinity. One is a portrait series titled Bioforms that addresses the intersections of Black identity and the science of Biological Psychiatry. These six works, commissioned by the Yale University Journal of Biological Psychiatry, are informed by themes of historical trauma and generational memory, faith and spiritualism, and practices of ritual collective healing. With this series Imeh recuperates an alternative aesthetic and social project for perceiving Blackness, not in trauma and pessimism but rather in healing, revelation, wonder, and transcendence.

The second series is a retelling of the story of Icarus, who Imeh reimagines as an African boy possessing dual identities––one who is doomed to his own destruction for “wanting to be like the gods” and flying to close to the sun, and the other whose inner radiance compels him to aggressively pursue the sun’s majestic energy, and to recognize his own layers of divinity. It is a developing story about migration, the concept of “home,” the beauties and dangers of spiritual journeys, faith, and transcendence.