A photo of Sana Musasama’s art exhibition ‘Returning to Ourselves’ on display at the Everson Museum of Arts in Syracuse, New York. Credit: Yolanda Stewart|Central Current.

An autobiographical series of artwork by multimedia artist Sana Musasama reflects on her work throughout the past decades and rebuilding herself, as she looks toward retirement. 

Sana Musasama’s latest exhibition, “Returning to Ourselves,” is now on display through April 28 at the Everson Museum. Musasama explores history and historical figures through her own interpretations. “Returning to Ourselves” has three components: 10 topsy-turvy dolls representing female figures of diverse ethnicities, a historical house series and a contemporary house series made out of ceramics.

The Queens-native pulls from her experiences traveling to and living in places like Cambodia, China, Japan, and Sierra Leone.

The exhibit is the culmination of about a year and a half of work, when Musasama, who has about four decades of experience in pottery and ceramic, returned to working on the pieces with renewed passion. 

“Where I’m returning back to my trajectory 45 years ago, when I was so powerful, so healthy, so happy, so driven by the world, which is the opposite of what I was during the pandemic,” Musasama said.

The topsy-turvy dolls represent the antebellum period, the time between the formation of the United States government and the start of the Civil War, when enslaved women made dolls portraying black and white female dolls conjoined at the hip. Only one half of the doll could be seen at-a-time, the other would be concealed by a long skirt.

In Musasama’s art version, some of the dolls portray female historical figures, while others are multicultural representations of women Musasama has met over the years through her travels to different nations.

Some of the topsy-turvy dolls showcased in Musasama’s exhibition depict dual representations of real-life public figures. The dolls include Nina Simone and Winnie Mandela; Coretta Scott King and Jacqueline Kennedy; and Maya Angelou and Lorraine Hansberry.  All of the dolls are adorned in long-flowing dresses fitting the antebellum time period, each affixed to a continually winding mechanism revealing one doll at a time during the spinning cycle. 

Her historical house series dates back 40 years, and she now has eight left in her personal collection. The ceramic pieces represent the places she visited during her time in South Asia and North America.

Musasama returned to her original ceramic houses during the pandemic, where she began to reflect on what they meant to her, especially when everything and everyone felt disconnected, she said. 

“I think with returning to something that I began 40-something years ago prior to any art school training is a form of healing, resistance and joy,” Musasama said. 

She began creating her contemporary house series throughout the pandemic to serve as companion pieces to her original ceramic houses she created in 1983. The pieces are physical representations of homes among the various cultures she encountered during her travels.

While reminiscing on these experiences and crafting the newer sculptures as companion pieces, it helped her to feel centered, she said.

“The work and the travels, and the activism, they’re all one breath.” Musasama said. “I don’t separate any of them.”

Her artwork relies on her ability to weave the different cultures she experienced traveling into her pieces. The topsy-turvy dolls, for example, then highlight the interconnectedness of even disparate cultures through their beauty standards and feminism with the topsy-turvy dolls. 

“They are all different narratives. What I would weave through all of the work that I would think of where I am right now is this tremendous joy that I feel in my studio practice that’s kind of new in comparison to the last 27 years,” Musasama said. 

Musasama will be visiting Syracuse on April 21, in recognition of Earth day, to host a workshop at the Everson Museum

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Yolanda Stewart was raised in the Bronx, New York City. Before choosing a career path in journalism she found a voice in writing plays, short stories, and a myriad of other creative outlets. She is a 2022...