Commissioned for Grenzenlos, Kolonialismus, Industrie, und Widerstand, an exhibition and “bookazine” (Josephine Apraku & Christopher Nixon, Museum der Arbeit, Hamburg), this series of collage works positions Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure as spiritual and medicinal practices, as well as technologies which developed as a result of the colonisation of Africa and Turtle Island, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Accompanied by text based works and photographs from the Miller / Robinson / Lopaz family archives, Isaiah Lopaz traces genealogies of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure to Traditional African Religions, African cosmologies, epistemologies, and ontologies. Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure, respectively, are practices developed by Africans who were enslaved in the United States. Practices which bring together the spiritual beliefs, customs, and workings of various west African communities and cultures. Syncretised elements of these practices superimpose Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, and mutations of Christianity. Collage and text based works in this series frame Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure as Afro-Diasporic practices which address the spiritual, the everyday, and the extraordinary. 

Images in order of appearance :
Over Land & Sea, 2020. Collage on magazine print, 29 x 42 CM.
In Spirit She Became, 2020. Collage on magazine print, 29 x 42 CM.
Yes the Answer is Yes, 2020. Collage on magazine print, 29 x 42 CM.