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About Ifé Franklin

Ifé Franklin is an unbound artist, utilizing a number of mediums to express family and community histories, including photography, quilt-making, and textile work, videography, performance art, and the written word. Her education includes a number of prestigious institutions like California College of Arts and Crafts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and she has worked with talented and well-known artists like Stanley Pinkney and Marylin Arsem but she continues to find that her expression remains closely personal, intertwined with her faith practice, ancestry and experiences. Ifé’s name means love in Yoruba, and the love of her people can be seen in her book-turned-performance art piece, the Slave Narrative of Willie Mae and the associated slave cabins, which bring the past into the present, in her collages which incorporate the words, images, and depictions of West Africans and African-Americans, demonstrating the ongoing cultural connection between African peoples across the Diaspora. Ifé demonstrates that art is not always abstract; it is also based on lived realities.

...How can I use this work from this medium and employ it into other mediums, to create something new, or something fresh, or something interesting?

Media Portfolio

I create my collage [because] I have things that I need to say and things that I want to come out. A lot of times my work is informed by what's happening in the world at the time or how I'm feeling about things at the time or how I'm feeling about a color at the time” [...] when I feel the urge to create, it really depends on where my head is at or where I would like to say where my heart is at

Roots & Futures

I'm very connected and my ancestors are very important to me. I know that I am guided by the will of my ancestors. I know that they wanted me to be the keeper. I love certain traditional ways of making art and ways that art creates vehicles, communities, places, [and] spaces where people can reconnect, grow, learn, share. and heal. [...] my process is to surrender to whatever is coming to me as I am the vessel

Co-Creation Team

Titilayo Odedele

Sociology PhD Student

Titilayo Odedele is a graduate of Boston College, where she received her B.A. in Sociology, and Northeastern University, where she received her MS in Criminology and Criminal Justice. They are currently pursing her Ph.D in sociology at Northeastern Universtiy.

Anna Zhang

Sociology PhD Student

Anna Zhang is a second-year Sociology PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Anna completed her BA in History and Sociology with a minor in East Asian Studies at Simmons University in Boston, MA.