Home
Remembering Forward
To my ancestors,
To those whose shoulders I stand on,
To the land that knew before we did,
To the land and those who knew me and my descendants—and dreamed for us,
To those whose imagination I am living in,
Thank you for Remembering Forward
Remembering Forward is an ongoing case study examining how land, lineage, and memory exist as both hyper-visible and obscured within Black familial histories. Centered on my family’s relationship to land in the American South, in Stony Creek, Virginia, the work considers what it means for something to be materially present—documented, inherited, lived—and still remain unrecognized through systemic conditions, erasure, and time.
The project unfolds through portraiture, installation, and material intervention. Photographic images anchor the work, tracing generational continuities beyond my grandfather, while soil, objects, and remnants sourced directly from the land extend the images into space. Together, these elements operate as a form of embodied remembrance, where the archive is not fixed, but felt.
“Remembering Forward” functions as both method and proposition. It resists linear understandings of history, approaching memory as something carried and reactivated across generations. The work does not attempt to resolve absence, but to remain within its conditions—holding what is seen, what is withheld, and what exceeds visibility.
What does it mean to inherit something that has always been there, but has not always been received?
And what are the limits of visibility when recognition itself is unstable?
All images © Jasmine Gabrielle Washington. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Reproduction or distribution without permission is prohibited.