Overview:
For Black Americans, ancestral memory is captured in foods that trace directly to Africa — including okra, yams and black-eyed peas. Olufani's one-man exhibit displays his stylized depictions of culturally important foods that have carried "the promise of life" throughout generations.
Masud Olufani was hurting. It was 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had everyone on lockdown, and, like the rest of Black America, he was shocked, horrified, and angered by the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.
“I found myself having a really profound response to those murders — not just emotionally, but on a physical level,” Olufani says. “It did something to my nervous system that I hadn’t experienced before.”
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The discovery of ancestors in Sierra Leone prompted Olufani to take a months-long trip there in 2021, after the pandemic lockdown was lifted. There, he was captivated by the sights, aromas, and sounds of bustling outdoor markets: merchants hawking colorful goods, grains and spices for sale, people climbing trees to tap them for palm oil.
The sensual feast, Olufani says, stirred thoughts about history, traditions, and the African diaspora. He had an epiphany: for Black people, food is more than just something to eat.
Spiritual and Cultural Force
“I started to think of food as a technology — not just as a means to satiate the body,” Olufani says. “It’s something that also carries the memory of the people [and] our ancestral knowledge. It shouldn’t be a passive experience; there should be some sense that something that’s happening here is really dynamic.”
At the end of his trip, Olufani returned from Sierra Leone to Atlanta just in time to catch “High on the Hog,” a Netflix TV series that examines global culinary traditions. The TV show and his travels inspired Olufani to reinterpret different African foods and their production as sculpture.
By bringing us in contact with ourselves culturally and the things we have forgotten through systemic erasure, that in itself can lead to a kind of a wholeness — knowing who one is ancestrally, and whose blood runs through your veins.MASUD OLUFANI, ACTOR AND ARTIST
The result is “A Sorcery of Sustenance,” a mixed-media exhibit that celebrates African food traditions, from seed to harvest. The exhibit, which celebrates the “alchemy” of transforming flora and fauna into nourishment, portrays food as a spiritual and cultural force that began in Africa but resonates across the African diaspora.
“In this exhibition, traditional African food sources, such as grain, yams, black-eyed peas, okra, rice, and others, are reinterpreted in sculptural form inspired by my travels throughout West Africa,” according to Olufani’s written description of the exhibit. “Food carries the promise of life as well as the seeds of multi-generational memory and cultural identity.”
“It is a mediator of meaning, connecting the past to the present — the world of the living to the world of the ancestors,” he wrote.
Integral Part of Black Culture
In the exhibit, a pair of horns echoing those on a bull are anchored to one wall; on the other, a motorized set of hand mills replicates the pounding of grain into flour. Other sculptures include a stylized wishbone, okra pods, root vegetables, elongated sacks of rice, and a caged chicken.
Olufani says certain foods, and the traditions surrounding them, have long been regarded as an integral part of Black culture. But those tastes and traditions are at risk of fading over time, or being lost through forced migration and assimilation.
“By bringing us in contact with ourselves culturally and the things we have forgotten through systemic erasure, that in itself can lead to a kind of a wholeness, knowing who one is ancestrally, and whose blood runs through your veins,” Olufani said.
‘Fascinating Stories of Resilience’
That knowledge and those traditions were “produced out of the extreme pressure unjust systems have forced us to deal with,” Olufani says, referencing slavery and terrorism in the U.S. as well as centuries of genocide, persecution, and colonization across the African diaspora.
“The diaspora is just replete with creativity and ingenuity and genius in terms of artistic practices,” he says. ”At a professional level, you’re aware of the need for community, so you don’t feel like the journey is alone.”
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While Olufani reconstructs and reclaims the past, he can’t say how ancient food technologies inform the future. There’s still so much to learn.
“There are all these rich tributaries of information I’ve yet to dive in,” he says. “It’s just fascinating stories of resilience, creativity, and just genius improvisation. I’m just beginning to scratch the surface.”
This post was originally published to Word In Black on October 7, 2025.