Hammonds House Museum presents NU AFRICANS an exhibition by Maurice Evans and Grace Kisa opening on Sept 18

Atlanta, GA --- Hammonds House Museum is excited to present NU AFRICANS. The artworks consider the notion that Africans of the Diaspora through the circumstances of bondage and oppression have evolved into their own tribe complete with cultural practices and their own language. Maurice Evans calls them "NU AFRICANS." Inspired by the legendary warriors and queens on the African continent, each woman was costumed by Grace Kisa and photographed by Maurice in two looks, as a warrior and a queen.The first look at the artwork will be on Friday, September 18 from 6:30-9 PM. The exhibition runs through December 13, 2026. To reserve your tickets for opening night click HERE.

The inspiration for this exhibit takes its roots from Africa, but the women featured are from this time and place. The intention of this project is to subvert existing stereotypes and prejudice, challenge the viewer to consider beauty beyond a eurocentric aesthetic, while creating space and offering agency, engaging the mechanism of Afrofuturism to imagine an alternative existence.

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Black women on this side of the Atlantic have been working toward dismantling the systems of oppression that have worked to impede their liberation for centuries. The creative process for this series has led the artists to research past and present warrior queens on both sides of the Atlantic as a celebration of fortitude while expanding on the ideas of memory, kinship, identity and power.

Maurice Evans was ​born in Smyrna, Tennessee but raised in Atlanta, Georgia. His creative focus was first realized through his relationship with music. His mother, a teacher, supported and reinforced his creative ability by allowing him to help design her classroom bulletin boards each year. By the time Maurice graduated from Griffin High School, he had gained recognition as a talented artist and had the confidence to pursue his passion.

In 1986, he was accepted to the Art Institute of Atlanta, where he studied Fashion Illustration to advance his painting and drawing skills. After college, Maurice pursued several odd jobs working for small and large design firms but ultimately could not achieve the artistic freedom he yearned for as an independent artist. In 1994, with the support of his family and friends, he had his first successful exhibition at the juried Black Arts Festival in Atlanta. From there, he soon bought a booth at the New York Art Expo, where he was introduced to new clients and collectors and grew to mass produce his artwork for museums and galleries internationally.

Grace Kisa is a Kenyan American artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. A multimedia artist whose primary expression is sculpture, her process is improvisational, a combination of creative play and problem solving. The materials she uses vary from clay, metal, wood, fiber, and resin. with a focus on recycling and repurposing ordinary objects. Her work draws inspiration from the experiences of a childhood spent in Kenya, Ethiopia, Botswana, Virginia, and as a practicing artist in Georgia.

By taking what is familiar and transforming it, she creates narratives that engage various histories while working through concepts of intersectional identities, examining the processes of migration and cultural exchange beyond borders. Attention is given to ideas of comfort, alienation, adaptation and assimilation, set against how that relates in a globalized world. Grace graduated from the Art Institute in Atlanta and has worked as a professional artist for over 20 years exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. Her work has been published in outlets including The New York Times, Forbes, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ArtsATL, Black Art in America and Rolling Out.

In 2024 Grace exhibited with the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Italy in the exhibit titled "Personal Structures: Beyond Boundaries" in the context of the Venice Biennale. Grace and Willie Cole were featured in the 2023 International Sculpture Conference. In 2021 The Atlanta Beltline purchased artwork by collaboration artists Grace Kisa and Ellex Swavoni for their permanent collection. During COVID in 2020 the NU AFRICANS exhibition was at Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, curated by Leatrice Ellzy, and only available for viewing online.

Artist Statement by Maurice Evans. Because I'm an artist in many different mediums, I try to incorporate as much of my talents as possible. Many of my works contain photography, painting, and construction. With mixed media work, I often start off with sketches of a concept that I try to translate into photographs. Most of the time the concept revolves around models that I body paint. Once I capture the images that I'm happy with, I then come up with a concept for a painting inclusive of the photographs. At this point in the creative process, it is important to stay open to the possibilities. This is where, as an artist, you must get out of your own way. Let the images and your imagination dictate what is going to happen next. The materials I often use (but not limited to) are wood panels, acrylics, oils, encaustics, pen and ink, paper cut outs, sometimes motorized parts, and models.

Artist Statement by Grace Kisa. My work grows out of a life lived between places. Born in Kenya and shaped by movement across continents, I inhabit a space in-between.Where identity is fluid, hybrid and continually reconstructed.My practice maps this shifting terrain through sculpture, installation, and mixed-media assemblage. I explore migration, belonging, and the ways personal and ancestral histories travel with us across borders and generations.

I work intuitively with found and repurposed materials. Resin, clay, wood, metal, fiber, and everyday objects touched by human hands.These materials carry traces of movement and use. By binding, weaving and reconfiguring them, I affirm the possibility of renewal in what is discarded. This transformation mirrors the construction of identity itself. Layered, improvisational, and shaped by a lifetime of crossings. African astronomy and cosmology are essential sources of inspiration in my work. I look to the ancient observatories like Noramatunga, star-mapping traditions, and mythic narratives that oriented communities long before modern navigation. The sky becomes a metaphor for continuity, an enduring archive of ancestral knowledge that connects past and present. In my sculptures, celestial symbolism anchors diasporic experience, grounding contemporary identity in the long arc of African scientific and spiritual understanding.

Equally important are the digital networks that shape our modern lives. Just as stars form constellations through imagined lines of connection, digital systems weave invisible threads across continents, linking diaspora communities in real time. I see networks as a contemporary counterpart to ancient sky-mapping. Both are systems of orientation, relationship and memory. In my work, layered materials, modular forms, and rhythmic structures mimic the flow of data, the patterns of digital communication, and the ways technology reshapes how we perceive distance, belonging and community.

Across my practice, I look for points of connection between continents and cosmologies, between ancestral knowledge and digital futures, between what we inherit and what we imagine. My sculptures become portals where histories converge, where migration becomes a source of strength, and where fragmented experience is reassembled into something whole.

Curatorial Statement by Christopher Swain. NU AFRICANS brings together the work of Maurice Evans and Grace Kisa in a compelling dialogue about Black identity, memory, ancestry, place, and the evolving experience of African-descended people in the contemporary world.

The exhibition approaches "NU AFRICANS" not simply as a geographic or cultural designation, but as a state of becoming—an identity shaped by ancestral memory while remaining responsive to migration, displacement, technology, cultural exchange, and the realities of modern life. Through their distinct artistic languages of photography, costumes, painting, music, and video, Evans and Kisa explore what it means to carry history forward while continually redefining what African identity can be by transforming an inclusive diverse group of women into warriors, queens and goddesses.

Their powerful works invite viewers into a space where the ancestral and the contemporary coexist. References to African heritage, cultural memory, spirituality, community, and lived experience intersect with contemporary visual vocabularies, creating images that resist a singular definition of Africanness. Rather than looking backward toward an idealized past, NU AFRICANS consider how heritage can be transformed, reinterpreted, and made vital in the present.

Maurice and Grace approach this territory from an individual perspective, yet their work resonates around shared questions: What do we inherit? What do we choose to remember? How does identity change across generations and borders? And how might art become a means of reclaiming, reconstructing, and imagining the self?

At the heart of the exhibition is the idea that African identity is neither fixed nor monolithic. It is plural, dynamic, and continually being made. NU AFRICANS recognize the complexity of contemporary the Black experience while celebrating the creativity that emerges from it.

NU AFRICANS is both an artistic encounter and an invitation to reconsider where we come from, to recognize who we are becoming, and to imagine the many futures that can emerge when heritage becomes a source of creative possibility. The exhibition ultimately asks viewers to see Africanness not as something confined to history or geography, but as a living continuum—one capable of adapting without losing its connection to its origins.

Hammonds House Museum is a 501(c)3 arts organization whose mission is to celebrate and share the cultural diversity and legacy of artists of African descent. The home is the former residence of the late Dr. Otis Thrash Hammonds, a prominent Atlanta physician and passionate arts patron. The museum is in a beautiful Victorian home, with a gorgeous John Rhoden Sculpture Garden on the grounds, and is located at 503 Peeples Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30310.

Hammonds House Museum's 2026 exhibitions include artist talks, and civic engagement activities which serve as opportunities for the community to have a deeper experience with the artworks. For information about upcoming events, to join the mailing list, become a member, or plan your visit, go to the website: hammondshousemuseum.org.

Hammonds House Museum is generously supported by Fulton County Board of Commissioners through the Fulton County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Atlanta Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs, Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, National Performance Network, Georgia Council for the Arts, The Estate of Dr. Doris Derby, and their newest sponsor The Ruth Foundation for the Arts (Ruth Arts), as well as donors and members.

MEDIA CONTACT: Karen Hatchett, kmhatchett@gmail.com