Hand dyed with a Batik wax-resist process on a cotton linen blend.

Transmissions explores water as a transmitter—of memory, culture, emotion, and transformation. Water moves with purpose and unpredictability, shaping landscapes as easily as it holds stories. It is both physical and spiritual, carrying the traces of what came before while making space for what’s to come.

In this work, the visual language of layered wave forms evokes the rhythms of tides, migration, and cyclical return. The deep blues of indigo connect this piece to ancestral practices, particularly those of African and Indigenous dyeing traditions where indigo was not only a pigment but a living archive. These traditions inform both the technique and the conceptual grounding of this piece. Indigo, like water, is a vessel—absorbing, staining, marking, and remembering.

The batik process, with its resist-and-release methodology, mirrors the way water both protects and erodes. The cracks in the wax, the pooling of dye, and the unpredictable results become part of the narrative—reminding us that transmission is never static. It is shaped by resistance, time, and the unseen currents beneath the surface.

Transmissions is an homage to water’s sacred role in the natural and ancestral worlds. It reflects on how we carry history within our bodies—fluid, adaptable, and in motion. We are vessels of inherited knowledge, shaped by the lands and waters our people have crossed. This work invites viewers to reflect on their own relationship to water: What does it carry for you? What does it transmit across generations?