October 28, 2026 - February 28, 2027
Artist Talk / Reception: November 11, 2026
6 - 7:30 p.m.African American Cultural Center Gallery
Witherspoon Student Center
North Carolina State UniversityYou Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar
“I never saw my passengers. It would have to be the ‘black nights’ of the moon when I would carry them, and I would meet ‘em out in the open or in the house without a single light.”
ARNOLD GRAGSTON
FEDERAL WRITERS PROJECT American Guide, (Negro Writers’ Unit)
Martin Richardson, Field Worker Eatonville, FloridaDigital humanist and creative storyteller ariana Farquharson debuts her satellite exhibition, “You Are Here: Geolocating the Self Through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar,” at NC State University’s African American Cultural Center Gallery.
Created in conversation with Maya Freelon, 2026 - 2027 Artist-in-Residence at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, and her “Grounded” exhibition season, “You Are Here” features 2D prints, 3D prints, and animations of AI-generated abstract forms called “diasporic wayfields” — 36+ studies of ancestrally-informed immersive environments / structures that extend ariana’s Field Dreams concept of Origination.
Defined as a navigable space or terrain shaped by memory, rupture, material and movement, these diasporic wayfields counter modern immersive best practice, playing with notions of (dis)placement, (dis)orientation and navigation. Distinct from a labyrinth or maze, the diasporic wayfield is both a representation of built structures intended to throw us off of our origin points and of strategic ancestral wayfinding within these strange shape-shifting structures.
The wayfields integrate raw and processed natural earth materials (e.g. clay, cotton, indigo, tobacco) familiar to ariana’s Carolina home, a reference to how these materials have historically supported and complicated our understanding of our origins.
Through ancestral notions of inherited and inhabited fluidity, and critical collective reflection, “You Are Here” invites guests to locate self and home in this strange post-pandemic “new world.” In doing so, ariana expands Freelon’s exploration of her own origins, re-origins and the journeys between.
In collaboration with The Gregg Museum of Art and Design and Artist-in-Residence Maya Freelon's "Grounded" Exhibition. Learn more