In ‘Sacred and Profane’, Pamela Sneed and Carlos Martiel confront the histories carried by Black and queer bodies, tracing the uneasy intersections of spirituality, violence, memory and survival.
7 September 2026
Presented at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in collaboration with BOFFO, ‘Sacred and Profane’ brings Pamela Sneed and Carlos Martiel into a powerful dialogue about histories too often erased or left unspoken.
Across archival interventions, performance and deeply personal gestures, Sneed and Martiel connect the violence of the past to structures of inequality that persist in the present. At the same time, ‘Sacred and Profane’ is an act of remembrance and reclamation, honouring those whose bodies, histories and voices have been pushed to the margins. Speaking with ART AFRICA, the artists discuss spirituality beyond religion, the politics of the body, collective memory, and the possibilities of art as a space for resistance, connection and shared witnessing.
The exhibition draws on religious imagery and history. How do you work with this tradition while also challenging its exclusions, especially those that affect Black and queer bodies?
Pamela Sneed: Complicated question: well, as you know, the basis of this exhibition for me was to explore the existence of slave pens or stockades that are said to have existed on Fire Island near the inlet in the 18th century. They were temporary holding places for men known as blackbirders to avoid paying taxes beforeslaves were stolen and shipped to the Caribbean. It is mentioned informally in many documents, but never explored. My research began after a conversation with the late photographer Nona Faustine, and I proposed it as something I would like to investigate during my BOFFO residency in 2022. It is the first investigation of its kind. This work is important not only with regard to Black history and world history, but it is also important that the origins of Fire Island be named and celebrated. It’s interesting that Fire Island has been viewed as a white queer Mecca, but in truth, its roots are indigenous and partially Black, which can be said for a lot of America. I think what contributes to a lot of marginalisation of Black people and Queer People is that our history has been erased and/or unacknowledged. Much of Queer history is centred around Whiteness and Stonewall, whereas there were balls in Harlem led by Black Queers at least one hundred years before Stonewall. One of the things that I said out loud when I first travelled to Ghana in 2005 and 6 and visited the large slave fort, Cape Coast Castle and saw a very different side of history was that if we knew this history and how powerful we are as a people for what we endured and survived, we would never allow ourselves to be dominated again. This is relevant to the question because on top of every slave fort in Ghana, there is/was a chapel and a chaplain on top of the dungeons where hideous crimes were committed against Black bodies. In the vitrine of Sacred and Profane, next to historical documents, an inventory of slaves, receipts for slaves and a slave collar, I included a family bible inscribed with my original name, Ila. I included this as a symbol of that problematic relationship between slavery and Christianity, and also how names were changed by slave owners to erase identity.
‘Sacred and Profane’ brings together ideas of ritual and everyday life. How does the body function in your work as both something sacred and something that breaks boundaries?
PS: There are two large-scale silhouettes on the wall in Sacred and Profane. These two silhouettes are very important because I wanted their representation of the Black female or women’s body in the exhibit. Oftentimes, when we think of slavery, there is a focus on the Black male body. Generally, there is outrage when Black male bodies are harmed, as in George Floyd and Rodney King. Truthfully, there are crimes committed daily against Black women, men and trans people. Queer bodies and all those intersections every day. I also created those silhouettes of my own body because I wanted to express how we all embody many types and layers of history. The other point was that I wanted the bodies to represent those who had been erased or disappeared.
Those two are called Homage 1 and 2. One is covered in seaweed as a symbol of the dirt and debris that covered slave bodies in captivity. The other is covered in shells, as shells are seen as vessels for communication with the spirit world.
Both of your practices address vulnerability in very direct ways. How does showing this work in an institutional space shift the meaning of exposure?
PS: I am grateful, actually, that BOFFO and Leslie Lohman decided to do this exhibit. It takes very difficult subject matter, and one where artists lay bare their vulnerabilities. It upholds it. I think the meaning change is not negative but positive, because it emphasises its importance and gives it an audience that might not have otherwise encountered it. Everyone I met was respectful of the subject matter, curious, and moved.
CM: This exhibition carries a forceful and direct meaning, regardless of where it is presented, because it is a faithful visual testimony of an undeniable past, present, and future reality. The transatlantic slave trade is the gravest crime against humanity in history. My life, the lives of my relatives, and the brutal and atrocious conditions that Afro-descendant people throughout the Americas have endured for centuries, and the consequence of more than thirteen million men, women, and children being captured, reduced to merchandise, and forcibly brought to this continent to labour for centuries.
I am very grateful that this exhibition was presented in a space such as the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in collaboration with BOFFO. I believe that, for the selection of works we made — based on Pamela’s initial research into the history of forced slavery on Fire Island — this institution was a very fitting choice. But I repeat: given the selection of works and the themes explored, more than the meaning they acquire within the space, what truly matters is the amplification of the voices these works embody.
Religious imagery has often been used to control and define morality. How do you reclaim or disrupt these visual languages in your work?
PS: Well, I think I answered question 1 somewhat, and that is to place the tiny bible next to a slave collar in the vitrine to expose the mockery and violence. The exhibition as a whole is not just an artistic pursuit but a spiritual one. It’s an act of reclaiming what’s been lost, but it’s also an act of restorative justice, giving humanity to those who were dehumanised. It’s a labour of love to say you are not forgotten. I honour your work, your labour, your sacrifice, your existence. You are important; some part of you exists in me.
The exhibition suggests that spirituality is constantly changing. How do your works explore belief or devotion outside of traditional religious systems?
Carlos Martiel: Spirituality is part of the human experience; it is the reminder that our passage through the world is not limited to what we see and perceive, but there is a deeper reality to which we are connected, one that gives meaning to our lives and to the situations in which we find ourselves involved. Although it has always been subtly present, it has been very difficult for me to embrace spirituality in my work because of the association this topic has always had with religion. But in recent years, and specifically after a trip I made to El Salvador in 2022, it has gained strength in my personal life and, consequently, in my artistic practice. As an artist who uses the body as a primary element, it has been revealing to understand that I am more than a body and a mind: I am consciousness and embodied energy, and that the body can also be a place of connection with that subtler and broader dimension of human experience. In the case of works such as Gran Poder, it explores a spirituality that sustains, accompanies, and liberates, one that transcends traditional religious systems and is more aligned with cultural and political resistance, with the practices of Candomblé and Umbanda, and even with the principles of Quantum Physics.
There are strong themes of pain, endurance, and transformation in your practices. How do these ideas connect to what the exhibition frames as sacred?
CM: For me, the sacred is life itself, not the life of a few, but of everyone. The same force that created you created me. We were all created by this universe under equal conditions and, therefore, we should all have the same social rights. As human beings, we often forget that fundamental equality and, from an illusory position of privilege, structural violence, displacement, and the impoverishment of entire communities are justified. The experience of those who suffer is also an essential part of the moral landscape of reality, and we cannot remain indifferent to the pain of others without it affecting us in one way or another. Every action — including indifference — has a consequence.
In that sense, my work explores experiences of extremity and resistance that seek to confront that indifference and activate a shared consciousness about life. I am interested in creating a space of connection with audiences, regardless of the context in which the work is presented, in order to make visible the experiences of those who have historically been denied, marginalised, and oppressed — bodies and subjectivities that have been erased or silenced within dominant narratives, but that are also part of this Universe.
The exhibition rethinks older symbols in a contemporary context. What new symbols or meanings come out of your work, and who are they for?
PS: I took many archival documents and basically created interventions and/or disruptions on them. I took actual runaway ads from Long Island, the Huntington area. I painted George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s faces over them to say that slavery continues through ICE and police brutality. It’s continued violence against Black bodies to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and DEI, which was meant to level an uneven playing field that had been created through slavery and segregation. I want people of course to be aware if they aren’t that slavery continues. My work, whether it’s poetry, visual art or performance, starts with me and then branches out. It’s for Anyone who gains something from it, but I will say it was so heartening to see young Queers of Colour visit the exhibit and see themselves and something they could relate to, and they thanked me for it.
How does ‘Sacred and Profane’ create space for shared experience or collective witnessing, especially for audiences encountering these works from different contexts?
PS: On the evening of our performances at Sacred and Profane, I read a lot of work I’d done on slavery, old and new, and Carlos performed one of their duration works. The audience was incredibly diverse and full. Similarly, on opening night, we had a line down the block to get in, and they say the number who attended was close to 500. People said the works in the exhibit, both Carlos’s and mine, were powerful, and they were moved. Through this exhibition, we were able to bring people together at this time to share grief, pain, and joy. At a time when LGBTQI people are facing so much targeted violence from this regime, gathering, communicating and creating community, just as in slavery, are acts of resistance.
CM: Keep in mind that this is a two-person exhibition that emerged from an artistic collaboration between Pamela and me in 2022, during her residency at BOFFO in Fire Island. From the very beginning, it has been a shared experience that, in essence, seeks to create a record and testimony, told in the first person, of the lived experiences of bodies that have suffered all kinds of violations and abuses of our fundamental rights through enslavement, marginalisation, and both material and spiritual oppression.
The exhibition also brings together different sensibilities, realities, and contexts. It approaches the experience of what it means to inhabit Black and queer bodies within the present sociopolitical reality of the United States and the world, shaped by different forms of structural violence and by the historical continuities of inequality. This exhibition is a historical testimony that honours the existence, faith, and strength of our ancestors and at the same time, a declaration and a song to the life of those of us who cannot, under any circumstances, inhabit this world from within the shadows and silence of the oppression that suffocates us.
This exhibition was on view at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, from 20 February until 12 April 2026.
