Periwinkle, Mourning Doves, Pound Cakes: In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens

Nomination Form

We invite you to contribute. Scan the QR code to submit the name, photograph, and story of a Black woman who has made an impact in your community. Whether a neighborhood organizer, healer, mother, educator, or artist - every submission helps grow this living archive.

This work takes its name and spirit of Alice Walker’s, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”, and references symbols of legacy and mourning.

Periwinkle, a plant used by enslaved people to mark the graves of loved ones denied headstones. Mourning Doves, believed to bring messages from those who have passed, visitations from angels. Pound Cake, a fixture at homegoings (funerals) and Sunday dinners, offering comfort and continuity.

The installation exists within the urgent need to resist historical erasure. In the face of increased efforts to distort or delete Black legacy - such as the Trump administration’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and the removal of Harriet Tubman from government websites - this installation becomes an act of defiance and preservation.

As Christina Sharpe writes in “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being”, we live in the afterlives of slavery, where memory, mourning, and Black survival interweave. This work responds to that call - to wake, to witness, to remember.

It uplifts both historical figures and community matriarchs: Fannie Lou Hamer, Toni Morrison, Harriet Tubman, Dorothy Silva-Coleman, and countless others who labored in gardens - real and metaphorical - so that we could thrive.

The installations is also informed by bell hooks’ theory of feminism rooted in love -particularly love of community. In recognizing and celebrating women’s labor, this work also acknowledges that community wholeness includes the participation, healing, and care of men. It affirms the need for solidarity across gender in our shared striving for Black liberation and thriving.

This archive is a collective offering.

You are invited to take part. Let us protect our mother’s gardens.