This lab is a direct extension of a journey that began when I traveled to West Africa and encountered traditional spiritual practices that fundamentally changed how I see the world and make art. That experience sparked a growing body of work exploring African ancestry, lineage, and how spiritual traditions survive and transform across the diaspora through ritual, pattern, movement, and material.

Salvador, Bahia is one of the few places on earth where those traditions are not just preserved but actively lived. I'm going to spend 14 days in deep research alongside local artists, cultural workers, and spiritual practitioners, learning how Candomblé and Afro-Brazilian ritual practice connect to the West African traditions I've been studying. That research will directly feed into new work I'm developing, including a shift into performance art as a new dimension of my practice. This also comes at a pivotal moment. I was just accepted into a graduate art program and will be curating my first exhibition this June. Every piece of this is building toward something larger, a practice rooted in ancestral knowledge, cultural continuity, and the living connections between Black communities across the world. Your support helps make that vision real.

If you've ever believed that art can do more than decorate a wall, that it can carry history, open conversations, and reconnect people to something deeper, then supporting this trip is a way to put that belief into action. I'm not going to Bahia as a tourist. I'm going as a researcher, a listener, and an artist committed to honoring the traditions that shaped my people and my practice. Whatever comes back with me, new work, new questions, new relationships, will eventually make their way into exhibitions, community spaces, and public conversations right here in the DMV and beyond.

Your contribution travels with me and comes back as something the community can experience. Any amount helps. Truly. Whether it's a small or large contribution, you're saying that this kind of work matters and that artists who dedicate themselves to cultural preservation and ancestral research deserve to be in the rooms where that knowledge lives. I don't take that lightly, and I won't forget it. And if giving financially isn't in the cards right now, sharing this page costs nothing and means everything. Help me get this in front of people who believe in the power of art to keep culture alive. With deep gratitude, Rashad