Ashe to Amen is an exhibit demonstrating the spiritual resilience of people of African descent.

The exhibit is currently on display until Oct. 4 at three galleries. These galleries are hosting different sections of the exhibit. Two of the galleries are the Ashe Cultural Arts Center’s two locations: 1712 and 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. These galleries will show the Traditional and Diaspora themes of the exhibit, respectively, while the third location is the Ashe Power House on 1731 Baronne Street. The Ashe Power House will be hosting the Contemporary section of the exhibit.

Dr. Leslie King-Hammond curates Ashe to Amen. King-Hammond is the Graduate Dean Emeritus and Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Through photography, sculpture and sketching, Ashe to Amen presents the various works of many New Orleans’ natives who seek to exemplify the power of a culture distorted in the minds of Americans through a people’s diaspora from Africa and their influence by oppressors and cultural environments. Ashe to Amen is as much a window into this ancient culture’s origin as it is a proclamation of the enduring spirit that survived and continued to evolve in the face of extreme social turbulence throughout the ages – most recently Hurricane Katrina.

Artists involved in the exhibit include Ron Bechet, a painter and current professor of visual art at Xavier University, Willie Birch, a New Orleans native with gray scale pieces in charcoal and acrylic and Martin Payton, a famous sculptor whose iron sculpture “Obatala” is on the cover of the exhibit’s promotional cover. Ashe to Amen will also include suits by the Mardi Gras Indians and other staple New Orleans art next to traditional African work.

For more information on ticket prices and gallery hours, visit their website http://www.ashecac.org/main/index.php/news-a-events/ashe-calendar/eventdetail/1486/-/ashe-to-amen-exhibit-opening.html.