Artist Bio
Dr. Rolanda JW Spencer
Dr. Rolanda JW Spencer is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and researcher whose work examines African American material culture, memory, spirituality, and communal aesthetics through sculpture, photography, installation, film, and archival practice. Her research-based creative work bridges contemporary art, sociology, African American studies, and public humanities, producing immersive environments that explore ritual, domestic space, cultural inheritance, and diasporic knowledge systems.
Spencer is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Morehouse College and an Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Innovation Lab Research Fellow. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts Studio, an EdD in Curriculum and Instruction, an MA in Education, and a BA in Journalism. Her interdisciplinary background informs a practice that moves fluidly between scholarship, documentary inquiry, and large-scale installation.
Major Projects
Black Tea Rhapsody
A multimedia exhibition and archival project examining African American tea traditions through immersive installation and material culture.
Divine
A Study of African Diasporic Divination Practices and Their Impact Across Continents — an ongoing documentary and installation project exploring African diasporic spiritual systems.
Iyami Aje: Mothers and Witches
A sculptural installation investigating the archetypes, histories, and spiritual dimensions of Black womanhood.
Spencer's work has been exhibited in galleries, universities, and public institutions, with components of her work entering archival and special collections. Her practice centers the creation of contemporary cultural artifacts that function simultaneously as artwork, historical intervention, and living archive.
Black Tea Rhapsody (2024) a poem by HIS
Project Overview
An Archival Act of Remembrance
Black Tea Rhapsody is a multimedia exhibition and archival project examining African American tea culture through material culture, photography, sculpture, immersive installation, ritual, memory, and social history. The exhibition centers Black domestic and communal spaces as sites of knowledge, healing, and intergenerational exchange.
Research-based and interdisciplinary in approach, the project draws from sociology, African American studies, and public humanities to construct an emotionally resonant, intellectually rigorous experience. The exhibition is modular and adaptable, designed for traveling presentation across museums, libraries, and universities.
Accessible to both curators and the general public, Black Tea Rhapsody invites visitors into a world where the act of brewing and sharing tea becomes a lens through which to examine identity, community, and cultural memory.
Exhibition Pillars
- Material Culture & Archival Objects
- Photography & Documentary Practice
- Sculpture & Installation
- Ritual, Memory & Social History
- Black Domestic & Communal Spaces
- Intergenerational Storytelling
- Immersive, Modular Design
Artist Statement
On Tea, Memory, and the Architecture of Gathering
Tea is not incidental to Black life — it is infrastructural. It holds the shape of the room, the hour, the conversation that could not be had anywhere else.
This work begins with objects: the chipped cup, the inherited saucer, the kettle passed down without ceremony. These are not decorations — they are documents. African American material culture carries within it a grammar of survival, sociality, and sacred practice that formal archives have long overlooked.
Through installation, I construct environments where visitors do not merely observe but inhabit. The domestic space becomes a stage for intergenerational storytelling — where the act of gathering over tea is understood as ceremony, as medicine, and as a form of communal knowledge-making that moves across time.
Public Programming
Education, Community & Dialogue
Black Tea Rhapsody is designed as a living public humanities project — not merely an exhibition to be viewed, but a platform for sustained community engagement, scholarly exchange, and cultural celebration.
Artist Talks & Panels
Curator-led discussions, interdisciplinary panel conversations, and public lectures connecting the exhibition to broader histories of Black material culture and domestic life.
Tea Ceremonies & Workshops
Participatory tea ceremonies and hands-on workshops exploring African American herbal traditions, ritual hospitality, and the social history of tea.
Film Screenings & Student Engagement
Documentary screenings, student-centered programming, and community dialogues designed to extend the exhibition's reach into classrooms and neighborhoods.
