The Water Spirit Will Take Us Home: The Story of Igbo Landing

Exhibition (Tubman Museum; Macon, GA): November 17, 2024 - January 26, 2025

Exhibition (Wesleyan College Leadership Lab; Macon, GA): January 27, 2025 - February 27, 2025

The Water Spirit Will Take Us Home honors the story of Igbo Landing—its survival, evolution, and enduring impact on African and African American art and culture. Originally presented at the Tubman Museum and later at Wesleyan College Leadership Lab, the exhibition explores themes of liberation and the power of collective memory.

In 1803, a group of Igbo captives from Nigeria staged a revolt aboard a slave ship in Dunbar Creek, St. Simons Island, Georgia, with at least ten choosing to drown rather than accept enslavement. Their defiant act became a powerful symbol of resistance, preserved through generations by the Gullah Geechee people in oral tradition.

The exhibition features The Flying African from Mikael Owunna’s Infinite Essence series, a tribute to enslaved Africans who, according to legend, escaped captivity by taking flight—returning symbolically to their homeland and the primordial blackness from which all life emerged. Also on view are three works from The Redd Family Collection of Black Art—Johnathan Green’s Oyster Pickers, Yemassee Choir, and Fishing on the Trail—each offering a rich visual exploration of Black cultural heritage and resilience.