Concept and Design by Jonathan González
Performed by Katrina Reid
Sound Design by Rena Anakwe

Obeah initiates from the residue of a work by a similar title, A Black Ritual (Obeah), conceived in 1940 by Agnes De Mille. In this capstone work to González’s research on grief, sound artist Rena Anakwe and performer Katrina Reid facilitate an unfolding speculative fiction set within a cosmic body of water. The duet forms as an allegiance, a sisterhood, and cypher between sound and body conjuring transformations in associations to one another and the audience.

Elaborating on the mythologies of Obeah women – sorceresses residing at the depths of the ocean found in the spiritual folklore of the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora – the phenomenological workings of the feminine element of water becomes a site for contemplation on death. Obeah reifies ritual as that which is mystic and superstitious to illuminate the Piscean capacities of grief and the rigor in mourning collectively.