108 death masks : A communal prayer for peace and justice

108 Death Masks: A Communal Prayer for Peace and Justice,  is a large scale sculptural work by artist Nikesha Breeze, honoring the millions of lives lost in the TransAtlantic and Domestic Slave Trade. Nikesha says, “The work began as a deep prayer for the reclamation of my ancestral voices. I wanted to find a way to honor my ancestors in a physical form, to offer them gratitude and to mourn their immeasurable loss.” 

The Death Masks were created over a 108 day vigil in honor of lost ancestors. 108 is considered a sacred number in the artist’s culture, representing infinite prayer. For 108 days, each day the artist carved one mask out of a single piece of clay. That clay piece was first rolled smooth, to represent the innocence of the enslaved body before its subjugation. Then, the artist would apply various acts of violence, extreme nature, and physical tension to the clay, to simulate the environments experienced by enslaved people in the US. In this way the clay was marked and “scarred” with its histories. These clay slabs were then pressed into the shape of the artist’s own skull, and dried enough to carve. From here each mask was meticulously carved in detail as an homage to an individual unnamed ancestor. This in-depth historically grounded process allowed for the work to be filled with the conscious intention of ancestral reverence. The final work consisted of 108 unique life-sized hand carved ceramic Death Masks. 

Installed in a single line, representing the endless loss of life still felt in the African diasporic community today due to the legacy and perpetuation of state violence. The 108 DeathMasks invite the viewer to stand one by one, face to face with each mask, taking a breath, as an act of honoring, remembrance and a communal prayer for peace and justice. A monumental work, reckoning with both the individual loss and the collective loss in our shared history.