ABSTRACT
The extraordinary importance of the change is that it is willed, called for, demanded. The incorporation and adaptation of African rituals and traditions not only root but help to sustain Black women, their families, and their communities. As an avant-garde artist of growing critical acclaim, Mutu has helped to resituate the Black female body in contemporary art as a cosmic force. As a meditation on the past in the present and as an example of the power of African diasporic verse, Amazing Grace invokes memories of slavery, the middle passage, and the hundreds of thousands crossing the Atlantic against their will. Through the New Ones, Mutu has made manifest that one of the ways to salvation is tied to the act of self-actualization through the production and consumption of art inspired by the ancestors and rooted in African traditions and beliefs.
