Pouring Libation: Lessons from the Water on Mothering, Ceremony, and Surrendering Courtney Desiree Morris

What healing power does the ocean hold for us? How can we learn to be in the right relationship with the earth, ourselves, and non-human companion species by engaging with the ocean? If we imagined the ocean as a divine ecology, how would that transform how we approach it? What if the ocean could teach us how to survive climate catastrophe and the violence of white supremacy? This fluid and dynamic conversation brings together four Black women artists, activists, scholars, and spirit workers to discuss Courtney Desiree Morris’s experimental film project, Sopera de Yemaya. The film explores the esthetic, spiritual, and political dimensions of Black motherhood by staging an encounter with the many roads of Yemaya, the orisha (Yoruba deity) who governs the top layer of the ocean. Morris joins playwright Sharon Bridgforth and Ayana Omilade Flewellen, a marine archaeologist, in a free-flowing conversation facilitated by Ashara Ekundayo about the wisdom of the ocean, queering motherhood, how Orisha might save the world, and the possibilities that emerge when we surrender to the ocean and the water that lives inside us.

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Thread:
Identities
Artist:
Produced by:
Conducted by:
Date:
10/05 2021
Season:
02
Episode:
02
Type:
Podcast
Credits:
Contributors: Sharon Bridgforth, Ayana Flewellen
Conducted by Ashara Ekundayo
SDGs
  • Gender equality
  • Life below water
  • Climate action