Celebrating Black Mermaids: From Africa to America

On Wednesday, March 29, people around the world will celebrate mermaids. But in Charleston, South Carolina, Cookie Washington does that every day. Cookie is an artist, curator and folklorist who recently led a sold-out art quilting presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. She has long been drawn to and inspired by the rich folklore and historic significance of black mermaid mythologies, and is currently preparing for the opening of Black Mermaids: From Africa to America, a fine art exhibition she is curating, which opens May 26th, 2023 at Charleston’s City Gallery at Joe Riley Waterfront Park.

The exhibit features the work of dozens of esteemed and award-winning fiber artists from across the United States, whose mixed-media works celebrate African goddesses as mermaid and water spirit, honoring the past and exploring them anew. The show’s theme contextualizes black mermaids through the history and belief systems of those forcibly removed from Africa and carried across the ocean. “Black mermaids traveled with enslaved Africans from Yoruba, West Africa, to distant lands, comforting them in the holds of the slave ships that took them far away from their homeland in Africa,” says Washington. “Because of the rich oral traditions of these peoples, few if any of these stories were written down until they were recorded by collectors of folk tales toward the end of the 19th century. The fine artistry in Celebrating Black Mermaids: From Africa to America is griot in nature. Each piece is a storyteller, using color, texture, form and embellishment to express a narrative.”

African merfolk first appeared in the millennia-old belief of the dwelling of water spirits in Western Africa, she explains. With the increasing contact between Europe and Africa of the time, these legends eventually combined with traditional European myths of mermaids. Thus, African water-spirits evolved from a representation as half-human, half-creature, to being popularly depicted as a half-fish, half-woman. With the arrival of enslaved Africans on the Atlantic slave trade, the traditions, beliefs, and practices of honoring ancestral water deities were transplanted into the United States. Tales of capricious female water spirits evolved into stories describing anything from wrathful sea creatures brewing great storms to harm the Carolina Sea Islands to mermaids acting as obliging “fairy-godmothers.”

Asked why an exhibit focusing only on Black Mermaid myths, Washington said, “As a mother of daughters and now granddaughters, I wish to reinforce the knowledge that the story of black women, did not start on a plantation in America. We are not coming ‘up from slavery’ we are descended from Black Goddesses whose worship predated the worship of Jesus by more than a thousand years.

Celebrating Black Mermaids: From Africa to America will host an opening reception on May 27th from 2 to 5 pm, at the City Gallery, where the public will be able to meet many of the artists. The exhibit will be on view from May 26th to July 9th, 2023. Related cultural programming and events will take place during exhibit and will be announced in the coming weeks.

City Gallery will be open Wednesdays through Sundays from noon until 5pm.