Name: Imani Dennison
Title: Between Starshine and Clay
Date: 2026
Dimensions: Variable dimensions; coffin sculpture 6 ft × 2.5 ft; pond 4 ft × 4 ft
Medium: Wood, cowrie shells, bronze, oyster shells, soil, water, single channel video projection, sound (10-minute loop)

Description:
Between Starshine and Clay shifts the coffin from a site of burial into a structure of passage. Drawing on symbols of protection, chance, and exchange, the work considers how Black life has moved through systems designed to contain it.

Soil and oyster shells ground the installation in land and coast, while a constructed pond and looping video extend the work toward water — a space shaped by both loss and migration.

Rather than mark an ending, the coffin stands upright as a presence. The piece holds together risk, memory, and endurance, imagining crossing as an ongoing condition rather than a singular escape.

A ten-minute video and sound loop extends the installation through personal and collective archival material. With narration by Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark woven among other voices, the film unfolds through embodied ritual, retracing a passage from Mississippi to Senegal and folding memory into broader currents of migration and return.