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Sit And Remember For Awhile

@oneof.afind

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•Interdevotionary artist•
Community ar(t)chive: @ourgrandmothers
Wellness weavin: @gatheringwellatx

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The ancestors said it’s time for a family trip down memory lane and I’ve got just the thing!

We comin to a Texas city near you for a communal gathering centered on sustaining family oral histories and weaving community stories through ar(t)chival creations.

Collective Memory + Collaging is a traveling workshop series, inviting family and local community members to join together for a day of intentional storytelling and collaging.

Check my bio for dates, cities, and workshop details 🤍
**RSVP to secure a seat**

shot & edited: @__saraamariaa
vision and direction: @oneof.afind & @__saraamariaa by @oneof.afind

Trick or treat, as in torturous fantasy or answered prayer—you choose.🧛🏽‍♀️🫀 by @oneof.afind

We’re so lucky to welcome Reneiss Garcia and @ourgrandmothers to Heritage Weekend.

Join us for this special, hands-on activation and create a keepsake in honor of someone you love. It’s a unique chance to celebrate the memories and people who came before us. @futurefronttexas is graciously holding space for this deep workshop.

The workshop is free, but space is limited and an RSVP is required. Comment HERITAGE for the sign-up link and Heritage Weekend info

Reneiss’s work grew from her relationship with her grandmother and the memories she carries. Through this beautiful art practice, she helps others honor their ancestors and bring their stories to life.

This activation is supported in part by a grant from @austinacme by @oneof.afind

✧ Meet Reneiss Ilisha, @ourgrandmothers.

Reneiss Ilisha is a Black-Mexican Texan writer, interdisciplinary artist, and community memory worker. She created An Ode to Our Grandmothers, a venerative storytelling project that commemorates the legacies of maternal elders and ancestors. She recently led a Collective Memory + Collaging workshop series across local Texas cities, including at Austin's Carver Genealogy Center.

For In Living Memory, Reneiss presents Threaded Memories: A Collective Heirloom, bringing together handmade paper, stitched community collages, family photographs, and recorded oral histories. Developed through community workshops and collective storytelling, the work becomes a tactile, communal quilt of ancestral memory, honoring remembrance as a shared responsibility, created and carried forward together.

✧ Want to contribute to Reneiss’s community-sourced installation? Black and/or Latinx Austinites are invited to join her Collective Memory + Collaging workshop this Saturday, October 24, from 3:30–5:30 p.m. during @blackaustintours Heritage Weekend. Visit their page for registration details.

Join us at the Carver Museum beginning November 13. Opening-night RSVP in our bio.

@carvermuseumatx

Design by @dione.me by @oneof.afind

I am privileged to announce that I’ll be displaying a debut ar(t)chival installation in the coming @echoesatx exhibition, In Living Memory at @carvermuseumatx.

This community quilt features collages sourced from local Black and Latinx Austin residents who participated in my recent Collective Memory + Collaging workshop series.

Would you like to add your family story to this installation? You’re in luck! I am hosting a workshop at @blackaustintours Heritage Weekend, Saturday, October 24th. (RSVP required. Link in bio.)

In the workshops, local community members join for fellowship and art-making centered on ancestral/elder veneration. Descendants hold a 40-min recorded conversation about their family history, followed by a collaging session incorporating family photos of the elders/ancestors mentioned in conversation.

If you are a Black and/or Latinx Austinite interested in contributing your family story to this community heirloom, pull up this Saturday and commune with us! by @oneof.afind

Last Sunday, we closed out the Collective Memory + Collaging inaugural series in San Antonio. This workshop felt like coming home after a long journey. 🤍

I am so grateful for everyone who helped create such beautiful, healing, and playful spaces. ✨
Thank you for choosing to sit and remember for awhile.
Thank you for being open to sharing in community space with loved ones new and old. ❣️

Infinite gratitude to my comrade @redsbodyart for sharing their fire medicine. ❤️‍🔥

shot & edited: @__saraamariaa by @oneof.afind

Wondering what the wind sings through your heart strings. by @oneof.afind

As long as we got each other, I’m prepared…

On this day 100 years ago, the building currently named the George Washington Carver Genealogy Center was erected. The building was originally Austin’s 1st central library. 7 years later (1933) the building was donated to the Black community of Austin and became the 1st “colored branch” of Austin’s library system. It became Texas’s 1st neighborhood African American Museum in 1979. This structure might be one of the most pioneered public spaces in Austin.

This place has sheltered civic goin-ons for 100 years!! Our ancestors are not only people, they are also places too. So yall make sure to give some gratitude to this elder, who has been holdin it down and keeping us safe to commune and connect as we please🤍

I am ever grateful to be gifted the responsibility of celebrating this centennial with community. The Genealogy Center is often overlooked, I invite yall to visit and check out the abundance of resources kept just for you! @carvermuseumatx by @oneof.afind

Grief work is dynamic. Holding loss can lift us when we hold it together.

This series was created to reinvigorate traditions of communal memory-keeping through oral history and artistic expression. Embedding an artistic practice in our history-keeping is a vital part of traditional archiving as a cultural praxis—one that predates the more modern notions of the archive as an institutional place.

Before “the archive” was an institutional building, organizing, authorizing and monitoring our engagement with the past, the task of remembering and recording our stories was ours.

This workshop is a reminder that this is a shared responsibility and many hands lighten the load. When we each recover our lineage stories together, we quilt a tapestry of collective memory/community history.

I pray the words, emotions, connections, and expressions shared feed us in multitudes—past, present, and future. 🤍

Infinite gratitude to @carvermuseumatx and
@transcendenttransitions for helping me bring this to life.

S/O to my charming and efficient ops crew for helping me create an inviting and intimate place for us all!! @jubilantspidey
@thicckness_everdean @dannythamanny

Much love to our documentarian of this heart work, @__saraamariaa by @oneof.afind

@oneof.afind on a mix of Portra & Tri-X film. 🎞️🖤✨

📸: @sweetestlanguage / @caminasinmiedo by @oneof.afind

I don’t take this light lightly ✨

When I lean into my vision, the universe bends to meet me. by @oneof.afind

on saturday we had the pleasure of co-facilitating the kick off of @ourgrandmothers collective memory-weaving and collaging workshops across texas.

reneiss, the founder, has put so much of her heart and spirit into the work of preserving the stories and legacies of our matriarchs and has made it her mission to give them the flowers they deserve.

history isn’t just the past, we are living and breathing history. it also isn’t defined by major world events either, it’s remembering how ya granny used to carry a glock in her purse and how everybody knew she wasn’t to be played with. it’s ya great-tete deciding she don’t wanna live in a small town anymore and moving and creating new roots elsewhere. it’s YOU deciding to be the first person in your family to graduate college and aim for higher education. it’s in every choice made before us that has shaped our world and the choices we continue to make.

WE are just as important and deserve to be revered as such. thank you so much, @ourgrandmothers , for having us be a part of your beautiful and necessary journey. thank you for taking your time and energy and pouring it into the community in this way.

and a major thank you to the beautiful guests who came out to honor their matriarchs. we pray you continue the work.

if you haven’t already, follow an ode to our grandmothers! they are doing really exciting work and this is just the beginning!

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨ by @oneof.afind