#: locale=en
## Tour
### Description
tour.description = Di Imagination Factri in partnership with Salient Group LLP presents a virtual tour of "Mothers of Creation", an exhibit by Mercy Sabal and Katie Numi Usher.
### Title
tour.name = Image Factory
## Skin
### Button
Button_221B5648_0C06_E5FD_4198_40C786948FF0.label = lorem ipsum
Button_81AB28BC_93B0_E591_41D6_BA2F923910AC.label = Play Video
Button_81AB28BC_93B0_E591_41D6_BA2F923910AC_mobile.label = Play Video
Button_820A6404_92E0_42E5_41CB_365ACC76108F.label = MEET THE ARTISTS
Button_84FBF4C9_93F0_6DF3_41D1_BC35574E063E.label = PRICE LIST
Button_84FBF4C9_93F0_6DF3_41D1_BC35574E063E_mobile.label = PRICE LIST
Button_89521FB3_93D3_9B97_41E1_AE2E7BFF200C_mobile.label = MEET THE ARTISTS
Button_8F395726_9321_CD24_41DF_8170399E23A6.label = ARTISTS INFO
Button_8F395726_9321_CD24_41DF_8170399E23A6_mobile.label = ARTIST INFO
Button_8F39F727_9321_CD24_41CC_7E66F67B186E.label = LOCATION & CONTACT
Button_8F39F727_9321_CD24_41CC_7E66F67B186E_mobile.label = LOCATION & CONTACT
Button_92942021_8FF2_7B07_41C7_230ABF138EFB.label = Shop Online Now
Button_93FC4732_8F9E_4505_41DF_7CA114E1800F.label = Shop Online Now
Button_9775426B_8F8E_5F1A_4174_F5D2B1263C2B.label = Shop Online Now
### Multiline Text
HTMLText_0B42C466_11C0_623D_4193_9FAB57A5AC33.html =
HTMLText_0B4B0DC1_11C0_6277_41A4_201A5BB3F7AE.html = Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Hand Embroidery
2020
this work is a performance. in December of 2019 Maurizio Cattelan sold two (2) editions of Comedian (edition of 3) at Art Basel, a Miami art fair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork)
this embroidery was started about a week after that event and wasn't completed until mid-January 2020.
it is a protest of an art world which is elitist, racist, sexist and defers predominantly to white men from art world *capitals* with a small sprinkle of artists of colour, small sightings of Black women, even less if from art world *periphery*
i could never dream of sticking a banana to the wall and making 480 K Belizean dollars for doing so, much less at an Art Basel, where surely, they haven't the faintest idea who i am.
$120,000 USD
Di Imagination Factri
91 North Front St, Belize City, Belize
Exhibit public viewing
Thursday 15 July, 2021
11:00am - 2:00pm
Artist Contact
Mercy Sabal - 501-664-2368
Katie Numi Usher - 501-633-9848
Di Imagination Factri
91 North Front St, Belize City, Belize
Exhibit public viewing
Thursday 15 July, 2021
11:00am - 2:00pm
ArTist Contact
Mercy Sabal - 501-664-2368
Katie Numi Usher - 501-633-9848
|Dolls & Beanies
Mercy Sabal
Technique: Hand Sewing & Knitting
2021
• Reversible doll $100.00 BZD
• Children Doll $60.00 BZD
• Doll $80.00 BZD
• Man Doll Baaba John $100.00 BZD
• Beanies $100.00 BZD
|Mothers of Creation
Mercy Sabal
Medium: Quilt
2021
In May 2021, the Image Factory Art Foundation commissioned artist Mercy Sabal to make a quilt that incorporated its new visualization and conceptualization, a process called Dajeel Taan.
Dajeel is a Wolof West African word that means encounter. Taan is a Yucatec Maya word that means to talk. The quilt features two striking figures in silhouette, on the left a Maya person in profile in the style of ancient Indigenous artists with one tear drop and on the right an African person with DNA1 strands for hair. Both icons were first developed by artist Carlos “lito” Quiroz, and now re-designed and fashioned by quilt maker guru Mercy Sabal.
The background of the quilt features many colors structured like pixels.
On 8th June, 2021 Mercy named her quilt Mothers of Creation, after the exhibit that she and Katie Usher developed.
(1) Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule forming a double helix carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms and many viruses. DNA is essential for all known forms of life.
|Mothers of Creation
Sewing and THinking
Mercy + Katie Numi
by yasser musa
15 july 2021
I kept thinking about the thousands of stitches it took to get here. About the hundreds of collaborations, it took to get us prepared for this moment.
In April 2021, Katie Numi made a bold move to reach out to Mercy. Then one day Mercy arrives to the Image Factory Art Foundation (di FACTRI). It had been two decades, since she had worked in this space, on the bank of Haulover, where the creek meets the Caribbean Sea in Belize City.
Two decades on, here they are, Mercy immediately embracing Katie Numi. Mercy’s language is woven words of protection for Katie Numi, to be guided, to be free, to be creative. Both women present their African-Indigenous-Garifuna selves as part of the complex erased and embraced whole.
The Mothers of Creation is about connection. It is about ancestral voices and energies being involved with contemporary art making and thinking. It is about demanding space and place.
That Belize will be forty, and that Covid-19 is rounding its 2nd year gives pause to consider the purpose of art in 2021, to people, to society, to culture. Mercy and Katie Numi are coming together at a time when we need more than ever, physical, intellectual, and spiritual strength.
In the early 1980s, Mercy was part of The Sarawee Women of the Soil Collectives making preserves and embroidery. In the 2010s Katie Numi was part of di Factri collective, but also the lead visionary behind the ground breaking four-year project LAB, literally a laboratory for creative voices in Belize.
Mercy and Katie Numi are artists who fight, they fight misrepresentations, community isolation, and the historical erasure and silencing of women voices in art. They also celebrate, each other, their ancestors, their culture and a constant intention to be more inclusive and connected.
Mothers of Creation is a game changer for Belizean art. It is consciousness raising in its intention and power. It is up to us to pay attention, and explain why to our children, its elemental coherence.
|Restoration 1
(sel yu own ting, i noh work fu you)
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Mixed Media
2020
Rhum Negrita extends the extractive nature of European *explorers* in "faraway islands", in thee good ol' colonial times of olde, using the imagery of Black women in service of selling merchandise, whether that be rum, tourism packages, the Gauguin-type idea of tropical paradise or sexual availability. The centuries-old formula continues to this day.
read: Whiteness Weddings and Tourism in the Caribbean, Paradise for Sale by Karen Wilkes for more
$300.00 BZD
|Restoration 1
(sel yu own ting, i noh work fu you)
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Mixed Media
2020
Rhum Negrita extends the extractive nature of European *explorers* in "faraway islands", in thee good ol' colonial times of olde, using the imagery of Black women in service of selling merchandise, whether that be rum, tourism packages, the Gauguin-type idea of tropical paradise or sexual availability. The centuries-old formula continues to this day.
read: Whiteness Weddings and Tourism in the Caribbean, Paradise for Sale by Karen Wilkes for more
$300.00 BZD
|Tired because this world makes being a Black woman hard
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: semi-destroyed hand-embroidery on distressed (bleached and left in the sun) jeans
2020
"yu need fu laan fu cook, wash and mash" the essentials of being a good Belizean wife. Putting bleach on any non-white garment therefore is a big no -no, obviously. after carefully embroidering this phrase (this worn out phrase because we are so tired of how white supremacy makes the world difficult for Black women) smaller words are more difficult to embroider, i began to pull the fabric apart so much so that the lettering started to almost fall away and the whole thing needed to be held together with pins.
$100.00 BZD
|Restoration 2
(para que vean que esto es racista)
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Mixed Media
2020
in 2005 (the same year i moved to Mérida to study art and when i saw Memín Pinguín for the first time) Memín Pinguín postal stamps were released by the Mexican Postal Service to commemorate the comic book's 50th anniversary. The then president of México defended the stamps when activists in the USA demanded that the racist blackface character stamps be withdrawn.
$300.00 BZD
|dugu
Mercy Sabal
Medium: Quilt
2003
The Dugu is a type of funeral ceremony, practiced by the Garifuna people, that brings the community and families together.
Private collection: Chris Roe
|Mothers of Creation
___
Mercy Sabal
b. 1955 dangriga, Belize
Delivered by midwife Mrs. Gamboa in her parents’ home on February 21st at 9:00 am on a Tuesday morning.
Sabal’s passion is to keep her culture alive and outstanding from then until she passes away.
She is a dollmaker, seamstress, quiltmaker and a trained midwife. She sews, embroiders and crochets, and emphasizes the importance of highlighting Garifuna culture in her aprons, bags, wall hangers, dolls and sewing large Garifuna flags as these are her heritage. Her work has been exhibited in Asia and the Americas.
___
Katie Numi Usher
b. 1986 San Ignacio, Belize
is a writer, poet and visual artist. She isn’t an activist, although some think that because she protests the erasure of Black women artists in art history/art theory and the gatekeeping that they experience at state-run art spaces which have become an integral part of her work. Usher developed and ran the experimental LAB with support of the Image Factory Art Foundation and participation from various artists in Belize. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and the Americas.
Ámuñegü (In Times To Come)
- Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective
Ámuñegü (In Times To Come)
- Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Mixed Media
2020
in 2005 (the same year i moved to Mérida to study art and when i saw Memín Pinguín for the first time) Memín Pinguín postal stamps were released by the Mexican Postal Service to commemorate the comic book's 50th anniversary. The then president of México defended the stamps when activists in the USA demanded that the racist blackface character stamps be withdrawn.
$300.00 BZD
|Restoration 2
(para que vean que esto es racista)
|Dolls & Beanies
Mercy Sabal
Technique: Hand Sewing & Knitting
2021
• Reversible Doll $100.00 BZD
• Children Doll $60.00 BZD
• Doll $80.00 BZD
• Man Doll Baaba John $100.00 BZD
• Beanies $100.00 BZD
|Tired because this world makes being a Black woman hard
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: semi-destroyed hand-embroidery on distressed (bleached and left in the sun) jeans
2020
"yu need fu laan fu cook, wash and mash" the essentials of being a good Belizean wife. Putting bleach on any non-white garment therefore is a big no -no, obviously. after carefully embroidering this phrase (this worn out phrase because we are so tired of how white supremacy makes the world difficult for Black women) smaller words are more difficult to embroider, i began to pull the fabric apart so much so that the lettering started to almost fall away and the whole thing needed to be held together with pins.
$100.00 BZD
|Handkerchiefs
Katie Numi Usher
Technique: 5 hand-embroidered white handkerchiefs
2021
"when i heard nonBlack men say, i thought 1 and 2
when i heard Black men say, i thought 1 and 2
when i heard nonBlack women say, i thought"
200 yrs ago Peggy was accused of stealing 24 handkerchiefs, held captive for 5 days and 5 nights. brutalised. filed a complaint when released and was punished for doing so. Dr Mansfield Bowen was found not Guilty.
$100.00 BZD EACH
Mercy Sabal
Medium: Quilt
2003
The Dugu is a type of funeral ceremony, practiced by the Garifuna people, that brings the community and families together.
Private collection: Chris Roe
|Seeing me 1,2,3,4
Katie Numi Usher
Technique: 5 hand-embroidered self portraits loosely using blind contour technique
2021
as a Black woman, my experience has been one of erasure (being removed/not included), lack of representation or representation which leans heavily into respectability politics (not seeing ppl who look like me in media), being received as a stereotype not as a individual, so it was important for me to do these self-portraits.
$250.00 BZD each
Mercy Sabal
Medium: Quilt
2021
In May 2021, the Image Factory Art Foundation commissioned artist Mercy Sabal to make a quilt that incorporated its new visualization and conceptualization, a process called Dajeel Taan.
Dajeel is a Wolof West African word that means encounter. Taan is a Yucatec Maya word that means to talk. The quilt features two striking figures in silhouette, on the left a Maya person in profile in the style of ancient Indigenous artists with one tear drop and on the right an African person with DNA1 strands for hair. Both icons were first developed by artist Carlos “lito” Quiroz, and now re-designed and fashioned by quilt maker guru Mercy Sabal.
The background of the quilt features many colors structured like pixels.
On 8th June, 2021 Mercy named her quilt Mothers of Creation, after the exhibit that she and Katie Usher developed.
(1) Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule forming a double helix carrying genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of all known organisms and many viruses. DNA is essential for all known forms of life.
Sewing and THinking
Mercy + Katie Numi
by yasser musa
15 july 2021
I kept thinking about the thousands of stitches it took to get here. About the hundreds of collaborations, it took to get us prepared for this moment.
In April 2021, Katie Numi made a bold move to reach out to Mercy. Then one day Mercy arrives to the Image Factory Art Foundation (di FACTRI). It had been two decades, since she had worked in this space, on the bank of Haulover, where the creek meets the Caribbean Sea in Belize City.
Two decades on, here they are, Mercy immediately embracing Katie Numi. Mercy’s language is woven words of protection for Katie Numi, to be guided, to be free, to be creative. Both women present their African-Indigenous-Garifuna selves as part of the complex erased and embraced whole.
The Mothers of Creation is about connection. It is about ancestral voices and energies being involved with contemporary art making and thinking. It is about demanding space and place.
That Belize will be forty, and that Covid-19 is rounding its 2nd year gives pause to consider the purpose of art in 2021, to people, to society, to culture. Mercy and Katie Numi are coming together at a time when we need more than ever, physical, intellectual, and spiritual strength.
In the early 1980s, Mercy was part of The Sarawee Women of the Soil Collectives making preserves and embroidery. In the 2010s Katie Numi was part of di Factri collective, but also the lead visionary behind the ground breaking four-year project LAB, literally a laboratory for creative voices in Belize.
Mercy and Katie Numi are artists who fight, they fight misrepresentations, community isolation, and the historical erasure and silencing of women voices in art. They also celebrate, each other, their ancestors, their culture and a constant intention to be more inclusive and connected.
Mothers of Creation is a game changer for Belizean art. It is consciousness raising in its intention and power. It is up to us to pay attention, and explain why to our children, its elemental coherence.
___
Mercy Sabal
b. 1955 dangriga, Belize
Delivered by midwife Mrs. Gamboa in her parents’ home on February 21st at 9:00 am on a Tuesday morning.
Sabal’s passion is to keep her culture alive and outstanding from then until she passes away.
She is a dollmaker, seamstress, quiltmaker and a trained midwife. She sews, embroiders and crochets, and emphasizes the importance of highlighting Garifuna culture in her aprons, bags, wall hangers, dolls and sewing large Garifuna flags as these are her heritage. Her work has been exhibited in Asia and the Americas.
___
Katie Numi Usher
b. 1986 San Ignacio, Belize
is a writer, poet and visual artist. She isn’t an activist, although some think that because she protests the erasure of Black women artists in art history/art theory and the gatekeeping that they experience at state-run art spaces which have become an integral part of her work. Usher developed and ran the experimental LAB with support of the Image Factory Art Foundation and participation from various artists in Belize. Her work has been exhibited in Europe and the Americas.
|Handkerchiefs
Katie Numi Usher
Technique: 5 hand-embroidered white handkerchiefs
2021
"when i heard nonBlack men say, i thought 1 and 2
when i heard Black men say, i thought 1 and 2
when i heard nonBlack women say, i thought"
200 yrs ago Peggy was accused of stealing 24 handkerchiefs, held captive for 5 days and 5 nights. brutalised. filed a complaint when released and was punished for doing so. Dr Mansfield Bowen was found not Guilty.
$100.00 BZD each
|Seeing Me 1,2,3,4
Katie Numi Usher
Technique: 5 hand-embroidered self portraits loosely using blind contour technique
2021
as a Black woman, my experience has been one of erasure (being removed/not included), lack of representation or representation which leans heavily into respectability politics (not seeing ppl who look like me in media), being received as a stereotype not as a individual, so it was important for me to do these self-portraits.
$250.00 BZD each
|Il Burlone
Katie Numi Usher
Medium: Hand Embroidery
2020
this work is a performance. in December of 2019 Maurizio Cattelan sold two (2) editions of Comedian (edition of 3) at Art Basel, a Miami art fair.
this embroidery was started about a week after that event and wasn't completed until mid-January 2020.
it is a protest of an art world which is elitist, racist, sexist and defers predominantly to white men from art world *capitals* with a small sprinkle of artists of colour, small sightings of Black women, even less if from art world *periphery*
i could never dream of sticking a banana to the wall and making 480 K Belizean dollars for doing so, much less at an Art Basel, where surely, they haven't the faintest idea who i am.
$120,000.00 USD
This is a 360 Virtual Tour
Move around freely by clicking anywhere
Click and drag to move around the Panorama
This is a 360 Virtual Tour
Move around freely by tapping anywhere.
Swipe to move around the panorama.