Artist Todd Gray describes his artwork Conjure Women (Hollywood/Akwidaa): “This piece signifies a journey, a prayer and memory. The top image was made in Ghana during a religious service, and shows a group of women summoning the spirits. Underneath is a wetland in Ghana adjacent to a slave trail. The slave trails followed waterways from the interior of Africa that ended in the Atlantic Ocean, while also marking the beginning of the Middle Passage. Anchoring the work is a photograph I made of the group En Vogue for a magazine in the ’90s. The journey from chattel slavery to glamorous icons took centuries. The African women could be conjuring the future, summoning the past, or perhaps just bearing witness in my narrative.”