There’s a Wave in Every Cell depicts a view from underwater. The belly of a ship cuts the blue sky and curls down into the sea. The figures plummet towards the ocean floor, in-transformation, in-flight. Almost Afronauts. They have jumped overboard to escape enslavement, or they were thrown off by the ship's crew. An abundant world awaits them comprised of salt, water and shimmering Blackness. Although this work is not made in relation or reaction to European maritime painting, it represents an important opportunity to complicate narratives of slavery in the art historical canon. Sikelianos-Carter gifts us an alternate speculative reality to J. M. W. Turner’s The Slave Ship or Homer’s The Gulf Stream. The view from underwater that Sikelianos-Carter has crafted awakens the possibility for life-beyond-death. The red “death” pictured in Turner’s painting centers the impossibility of Black life, whereas Sikelianos-Carter is making a claim for Black Aliveness (as theorized by scholar, Kevin Everod Quashie). Once we have broken beneath the surface, we are transported into a blue portal brimming with ancient processes of alchemic abundance. The sliver of ship glistens with spells that have been adhered to the bottom of the boat like barnacles, patterns for their use. Their Blackness was always their protection. The initial act of escape or violent discard that exists off the page becomes an opening for their bodies to refuse “death.” They become the vessels for Life and Aliveness that are inherent to their Blackness. (Description provided by the artist.)