This painting is part of the Africosmos series by Alisa Sikelianos-Carter. The work is a collaged amalgam of imagery of Black hair, hand embellished with glitter, crystals and shells. The Africosmos series is hypothesizing the aftermath of a speculative Big Bang after which another universe is formed that encompasses planets formed by merging with parts of our bodies. The series relates to the overarching narrative that connects all of Sikelianos-Carter’s works, which illuminates a fictional realm outside of time, in which “future-sent deities” inhabit a cosmically bountiful world that celebrates and pays homage to Black ancestral majesty, power, and aesthetics.

Utilizing the body as a sight of alchemy and divinity, Sikelianos-Carter uses web and catalogue-sourced images inspired by traditionally Black hairstyles to construct new archetypes, such as the Afronauts: spirit beings who inhabit the undersea world of the Middle Passage, through which millions of enslaved Africans were transported by force on slave ships, often being hurled, or hurling themselves overboard as an act of resistance, along the way.