The Earth is a living altar. Mama Earth, The Great Mama, Our One Planet, the home place that we share with Mother Earth’s other children in the glorious mystery of life. This exhibition is a 11-part audiovisual homage and tribute to our planet. The Living Altar exhibit was conceived under the direction of Soil and Shadow and the Kalliopeia Foundation and was gestated over a period of 18 months, beginning in October 2019 with the convening in Chicago of a group of twenty Black and people of color community leaders from across the country. These activists, artists, writers and academics brought together a unique combination of historical and ancestral knowledge, artistic interpretations, and sharp assessments of current political, societal, and environmental conditions and challenges.

In 2020, The Living Altar was birthed as a multimedia exhibit, a deserved platform for the participants of the gathering called Spiritual Ecology and Culture, a way to share their knowledge and wisdom, information that is critical to orienting us during these turbulent contemporary times.

Under the creative direction of Noni Limar and joined by Blackbird and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art the exhibit brings together the stories of the participants with lovingly curated original and recorded music and powerful imagery. The exhibit experience is multidimensional, wrapping the audience in the sensation of sitting at the feet of their elders. Sitting in a circle created by a shared understanding, a singular act of ceremony, a sensory-rich moment that is a catalyst of transformation.

An altar is the focus of rituals, the abode of offerings, the site where the commonplace is consecrated, where the ordinary can be made sacred. The Earth is a living altar as the location where humans gather with Mother Earth’s other children. Children of jelly, and blob, toothed, clawed, fanged, winged, naked, feathered, furred, hairy, stalking, walking, swimming, slithering, shimmering children, climbing vine children, stone children, subatomic children, mountain children, river children, moon and star children. In many of our communities our elders hold knowledge of the power that springs from the place where culture intersects with the spirit realm and the land. It is at this juncture of spirit, ecology and culture where we can see clearly that memories of the past and the hopes of our ancestors are in the soil, nourishing the challenges and promises of our future. We come from peoples who experienced and feared punishment for reading, or for visiting libraries, to emerge as peoples who can use the power of words, music and imagery to generate ceremonies of disruption, cultural resistance, and healing. We now find ourselves in need of these reminders, these promises, hopes and ceremonies.

Urgent current challenges exist at the intersection of spirit, ecology and culture. The Living Altar is the creative product of this intersection and these challenges. The Living Altar becomes a place where the convenors, curators, artists and audience can explore the question of what we must place on the altar to honor spirit and ecology in this critical moment in the lives of Earth and her children. The answer found in this complex, layered, multiply textured exhibit is that The Living Altar holds a key to our healing and liberation. This altar is an expression of gratitude grounded in intentional self-care and soul-care. This is a table of family and community, of the rich black future of vigorous soils and healthy souls. This altar is a time capsule, a living, breathing portal that moves us forward on a path of actualization for our developing consciousness and spiritual growth. This altar is a womb, a sanctuary, a garden or the place where our trials can become trails and where scared can become sacred.

The Earth is the only home we will ever know. The Earth houses the dream doula, helping us give birth and making our visions whole. We recognize that we are in critical need of these reminders that we are sacred keepers of this Earth, reminders of this knowledge, our individual spiritual growth and the blessedness of our relationships with each other. The wisdom of The Living Altar holds that like a butterfly we are emerging, like a dandelion we are transforming, we are on another great migration and we are re-homing, orienting ourselves by a magnetic compass that points us only in the direction of professing a deep and respectful love for ourselves, each other, the Earth and all of her children.