SACRED AXA is a love letter, a visual tribute of a space that has been profoundly special to my family and me. It is my effort to show the possibilities of what can be when we lean into the spaces where Black collective rituals take place beyond the confines of colonial vestiges.

 

This film visually represents Anguilla, B.W.I,. an island that is 16 miles long and 3.5 miles wide and inhabited by just over 15,000 people (85% of whom are Black). It is an island that boasts nearly fifty churches, cemeteries, and locally identified consecrated areas that hold the sacred attentions of the island’s residents.

 

AXA holds my scholarly intent. But it is a scholarly approach intimately connected to my clear sense that Anguilla called my family and I there. I believe that when an island calls, one should answer, and so this is also a sharing of a sacred story that is my own.

 

This film is buttressed by sounds of the sea, moored by the companion text that begins this Artist Statement, and given voice by our eldest son, Cy Manigault-Bryant. It tells a visual story of 30 island sites. With a run time of just over four minutes, the film is a testament to the ways that in Anguilla, that which is sacred is also ordinary and every day.

 

Welcome to SACRED AXA.