Meeting the Moon (My Impressions as an Offering)

Artist/Maker Alisa Sikelianos-Carter (American, born 1983)

Date2024-2025

MediumUnique wall-mounted giclée print hand-embellished with glitter; floor sculpture in acrylic, gouache, synthetic hair worn by the artist, handmade paper, black mica, glitter, and glass on wood

DimensionsOverall (Giclée, 2025.3.1): 48 × 42 in. (121.9 × 106.7 cm) Overall (Floor sculpture, 2025.3.2): 5 × 24 × 24 in. (12.7 × 61 × 61 cm)

Credit LineCreative Commission, production and purchase supported by the Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Fund for Innovation in the Arts.

Object number2025.3.1-2

On view

DescriptionThe Wellin’s most recent Creative Commission, Meeting the Moon (My Impressions as an Offering), represents a development in artist Alisa Sikelianos-Carter’s Africosmos series, where she constructs amorphous fractal compositions from printed pictures of traditionally Black hairstyles, hand-embellished with glitter. Upon close inspection, these imposing, sparkling constellations can be seen to be constructed from braids, twists, and dreadlocks. For her Creative Commission, Sikelianos-Carter has incorporated images of her own braided hair into her artwork’s digital collage for the first time, and constructed an accompanying sculptural form. The artist’s own synthetic hair is included in the foundation of the circular form, along with hand-made cotton paper embossed with her braids, that create fossil-like impressions on the work’s surface. Sikelianos-Carter’s work foregrounds the body’s–and particularly the Black body’s–relationship to the cosmos. She has commented that “the knowledge of our bodies being made from stardust older than Earth is something I go back to a lot when I’m feeling disconnected from the universe. I was thinking about these connections and wanting to embody these qualities of infinitude and luminosity.”

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