Ifé Franklin

Ifé Franklin’s practice involves several genres of artmaking inspired by slave narratives, dreams, dance, song, dreams and visions. Over the last decade she has been developing The Indigo Project, which honors the lives and history of formerly enslaved Africans/African Americans who labored to produce materials that generated the wealth of nations. At the center are Franklin’s Ancestor Slave Cabins which often incorporate Adire fabric, an indigo-dyed cotton cloth decorated using a resist technique from the Yoruba culture. These assemblages are built in collaboration with the community and cultivate connections that promote understanding and healing from the hard history of enslavement. In 2018 Franklin published “The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae,” a fictional account of her great-grandmother’s escape from slavery to freedom. The work was adapted into a short film in 2021.

Franklin’s work has been exhibited at The Slave Dwellings Project in South Carolina, the North Charleston Arts Festival, and throughout the Boston area including The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Medicine Wheel Productions, Villa Victoria, The Eliot School of Applied Arts, Franklin Park, and the Royall House and Slave Quarters. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Fitchburg MA, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. In 2017 Franklin was awarded several Grants by the New England Foundation for the Arts, The Boston foundation, The Tanne Foundation, and Olmstead Now. Originally from Washington D.C, she graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has lived and worked in Roxbury MA for over 30 years.