Featured Artist: Mekbib Gebertsadik
Sankofa
Mekbib Gebertsadik’s Sankofa summons the past not as a place of retreat, but as a living archive from which silenced knowledge, embodied memory, and unfinished histories may be reclaimed. Its fluid, uncontained forms resist easy interpretation, echoing this journal’s commitment to unruly arts and to voices that persist despite erasure. Like Sankofa itself, this work insists that transformation requires return—to what has been suppressed, carried in the body, and preserved through movement, ritual, image, and collective memory.
What Sankofa means
Sankofa originates from the Akan people of Ghana in West Africa. It is a word from the Twi language that translates to "go back and get it" The concept is visually represented by an Adinkra symbol, which depicts a bird with its feet planted forward while its head is turned backwards.