RANDOM
THE PEOPLE'S PETITION
PEOPLE'S PETITION
A 45 ft interactive art installation for the African American Museum in Philadelphia
On December 30, 1799, Reverend Absalom Jones and seventy free Black men from Philadelphia submitted a petition to the United States Congress calling for an end to the transatlantic slave trade, protection for free Black people from kidnapping, and a future in which liberty and justice extended to all. Though Congress refused their appeal, the petition remains one of the earliest collective assertions of Black civic participation in the United States.
The People’s Petition extends that act into the present.
Through participatory technology, each visitor contributes a digital signature that joins an ever-growing procession across the installation. The work transforms an archival document into a living civic space where historical testimony and contemporary participation exist together. Every signature affirms that the questions raised in 1799 remain unfinished and that the responsibility to pursue justice belongs to every generation.
RIDE THE ANIMALS
In spring of 2026 this collection of work was exhibited at Street Theory Collective in Cambridge, MA.
The exhibition unfolds as a path. Viewers move alongside textile works that hold fragments of diaspora life, including food, gesture, adornment, and memory, before arriving at a central space of encounter. At the center, a group of ridable animal sculptures invites the body into the work. This shift from looking to riding is intentional.
Across the exhibition, The Mz.Icar Collective drew from African diaspora and Caribbean cultural references shaped by their lived experiences. Their work builds from layered materials and imagery: burlap coffee sacks, braided forms, signage, archival fragments, and illustrated figures that move between memory and imagination.
Fruit appears throughout the work, mango, coconut, soursop, banana, pointing to histories of labor, trade, and migration. Burlap carries those histories forward, holding the weight of movement across land and water. Figures are often dressed with care and precision. Patent leather shoes, pressed clothing, and staged environments speak to protection and the quiet strategies people use to move safely through the world.
This work sits inside the tension between culture and assimilation. It considers what is carried forward and what is softened or set aside in order to survive. It also acknowledges how cultural forms are continuously reworked, repackaged, and resold, often disconnected from the people who made them.
At the same time, the exhibition makes space for joy, softness, and being held. Music, food, and gathering appear as places where the pressure lifts and people are able to exist fully.
The animals hold a different kind of question. To ride is to move, to play, to travel. It is also to be carried, to be guided, or to be burdened. In diaspora life, the line between those states is not always clear.
VIDEOS & BTS
THE EXHIBITION
THE BOOK
We just had to make a book! This vibrant 54-page matte photo book that expands the exhibition into a tactile object you can hold, revisit, and journey through again and again.
Scattered throughout the book are interactive QR codes that unlock augmented reality activations, allowing selected images and artworks to come alive through animation, sound, and layered digital storytelling.
Laundromat Project Liberation Series: Sound Collage Workshop
SONICS OF THE ANCESTORS
A five-part sound exploration by Mz.Icar Collective
Laundromat Project Liberation Series, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
Sonics of the Ancestors was a five-part, process-based series exploring sound as something we hear, feel, make, carry, and remember.
Created as part of The Laundromat Project’s Liberation Series, the project brought artists, musicians, neighbors, and guests together in Bed-Stuy for a sequence of participatory experiments centered around sound, vibration, memory, and collective creation.
Across five gatherings, we explored different ways of encountering sound: making beats together, translating frequencies into visible patterns through vibration, slowing down through sound and meditation, recording voices and stories onto cassette tape, and gathering around a drum circle.
Each session became its own experiment.
We were interested in what could emerge through listening, repetition, improvisation, conversation, and play. Participants moved between analog and digital technologies, using drums, speakers, recording equipment, cassette tapes, sound frequencies, and their own bodies as tools for making and receiving sound.
At the center of the series was a question: What does sound carry?
Rhythm can hold memory. A voice can become an archive. Bass can move through a body before it is understood as music. A recording can preserve a moment long after the people who made it have left the room.
Sonics of the Ancestors considers these experiences as forms of transmission, connecting contemporary experimentation with long histories of rhythm, oral storytelling, gathering, and communal knowledge across the African diaspora.
The five sessions became a living archive of the project: beats made together, voices captured on tape, vibrations made visible, drums shared in a circle, conversations, movement, silence, and the sounds of people occupying a space together.
The video and audio collected here document fragments of that process.
They are traces of what happened in the room, and of what continues to resonate after it.
Voice Recording & Sound Collage Guest Collaborating artists: Rashid Amir and Eliki Sol Using portable mics and phones, participants paired up to capture Bed Stuy’s stories, ambient hum, conversations, rhythms, sirens, and silence, and collaboratively remix these sounds into a living collage. This session was grounded in presence, attuning our ears to the neighborhood’s past, present, and future.
Call to the Ancestors: Communal Drum Circle
Collaborating Artists: Shaun Kelly and Brion Vann
This intergenerational drumming circle invited participants of all ages to explore memory, place, and dreams through guided prompts, drum rhythms, and call-and-response. We learned about the legacy of this practice and synced ourselves.
The Shape of Sound
Guest Collaborating artists: Osei Alleyne
Participants explored visualizing sound and cymatics. Using tools such as a Stylophone Theremin, and speakers paired with a projector, we examined the shape of sound and the connections between language and tone throughout the African Diaspora to create new works.
Community Beatmaking
Collaborating Artists: Isaac Sawyer and Amore Querida
Beat Cypher: Community Beatmaking Session invited participants to become co-producers, using drum machines and collected sounds to build new beats. This session blended traditional rhythms with contemporary beat-making in a collaborative cypher
BLURRED REALITIES
If you happen to find yourself in Lansing, Michigan, please be sure to check out ‘Blurred Realities’ A group show at MSU’s Collab Studio. We’re exhibiting Ile Omi: House of water. It’ll be up until summer.
More about the Exhibition:
We immerse ourselves in fairy tales and science fiction, fully aware that some elements are pure fantasy. Yet, we bristle to find out that a viral video was fabricated or that a striking photograph was generated by AI. Why do we so easily accept some fabrications while questioning others? Blurred Realities invites you to examine the dilemmas tied to dis/mis/information, artificial intelligence, and shifting perceptions of truth. This exhibition is not just about deception; it is about the ways our perceptions are shaped, guided, and sometimes manipulated. How do we determine what is real, what is imagined, and what is meant to deceive?
As technology increasingly influences our perspectives, it also amplifies biases, reshapes conversations, and reinforces divisions. In an era where trust is fragile, we must reconsider not just what we see, but how we see and understand. This exhibition challenges you to think critically, to question the narratives you accept, and to recognize the forces that shape your understanding of the world.
As we mark the 250th anniversary of American democracy, these questions take on even greater urgency. A nation built on the ideals of informed debate and collective decision-making must grapple with how truth is constructed, contested, and controlled. Blurred Realities invites us to reflect on how we navigate this evolving landscape—individually and as a society—in pursuit of a more informed future.
Street Theory Gallery & Collective NEW GALLERY
Join us for the soft opening of Street Theory Gallery & Collective, a new gallery and arts incubator rooted in the heart of Central Square, Cambridge.
This exhibition marks the beginning of a new chapter for Street Theory Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering rising creatives and reimagining how art connects community, culture, and collaboration.
Come celebrate art, community, and the beginning of something special in Central Square, with DJ Big Bear on the 1’s & 2’s!
Event Details:
Street Theory Collective | 541 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
Artwork and limited-edition prints available for purchase.
Light refreshments and drinks will be served
Wheelchair accessible; nearest MBTA stop: Central Square (Red Line).
This is a 21+ event.
Free and open to the public.
Space will be limited; RSVP does not guarantee entry
The Living Room Gallery Series Featured Artists:
123Klan | @123klan
Ajamu Kojo | @ajamu
Ayana Mack | @ayanamack.co
Caleb Neelon | @calebneelonart
Cey Adams | @ceyadams
Curtistic | @curtistic
Cyrille Conan | @cyrilleconan
Don Rimx | @donrimx
Flowrbomb | @flowrbomb___
Garden of Journey | @gardenofjourney
Greg Lamarche | @gregbfb
Ibrahim Ali-Salaam | @ibi5000
Imagine | @imagine876
Indie184 | @indie184
Ingrid Yuzly Mathurin | @yuzlymathurin_
Jeff Henriquez | @jeffhenriquezart
Kno1famous | @kno1famous
Layqa Nuna Yawar | @layqanunayawar
ManOne | @manoneart
Marka27 | @marka_27
Massiel Grullón | @massielgrullondesigns
Meclina Gomes | @meclinaart
Michael Talbot | @talbotsart
Moses Mitchell | @mosesmitchell
Mz. Icar | @mz.icar
Percy Fortini-Wright | @percyfortiniwright
Problak | @problak
Rixy | @rixyxir
R.E.U.J | @r.e.u.j
Sagie Vangelina | @rastagrandpa
Silvia Lopez Chavez | @silvialopezchavez
SOEMS | @soems
Stephen Hamilton | @theartofstephenhamilton
Tony Peralta | @peraltaprjct
Upendo | @upendo_
LAUNDROMAT PROJECT
THE LAUNDROMAT PROJECT + LEGENDARY
Not sure if you have happened to stroll by the Laundromat Project’s HQ in Bed-Stuy. Well, if you did, you may have noticed some new nifty work by the collective adorning the window.
We are so thrilled to share that this piece was created for the 2025 Create & Reflect – Window Commission. This window vinyl is an iteration of our piece Sonics of the Ancestors from our Diaphanous series, reimagined specifically for the Bed-Stuy site. At its center is a futuristic portrait layered with sonic and ancestral references, symbolizing a portal where memory, sound, and speculation converge. To ground the piece in Brooklyn, we’ve overlaid an architectural land use map of Bed-Stuy, subtly altered to read “legendary” and “and us,” creating a playful, poetic intervention that bends time and reframes the future as community-centered. Select areas behind the map lines are transparent, allowing natural light to shine through and animate the work throughout the day. This piece acts as both a visual archive and a roadmap toward liberatory possibility.
LEGENDARY: AR OF SONICS OF THE ANCESTORS
For The Laundromat Project’s fundraising event, GATHER, The Mz Icar Collective unveiled an exclusive augmented reality experience tied to our window installation, Legendary, a site-specific remix of our original work Sonics of the Ancestors. This activation transforms the storefront into an interactive portal that expands the visual narrative through motion, sound, and storytelling. Rooted in Bed-Stuy and inspired by Black Quantum Futurism, the piece invites viewers to explore hidden layers of memory, movement, and collective imagination. Through their phones, and provided Headsets guests were able to activate animated visuals and audio elements that can be experienced during the event, creating a multi-sensory encounter with a future shaped by community, culture, and sound.
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ABOUT DIAPHANOUS
Diaphanous: In it’s full iteration Diaphanous is a multi room experience. An immersive collection of art telling stories and guiding guests through a whimsical imaginative collection of experiences and material objects. This collection blends art, technology, and history to re-imagine and re-tell stories of the African Diaspora that have been excluded or marginalized due to racial and gender biases. Each offering embodies a theme of something or someone that could only exist now but reframed as if it did exist in a prior time, space, or dimension. we have proken d down this projects into a thematic catagories, Going Places, Ile Omi: House of Water, Soft Spaces and The Bottom End. This group of work is an extension of our Diaphanous series. You can learn more Diaphanous here.
THE REMIX
THE REMIX
We made things. Beautiful, wearable, surprising things.
The Remix is a 55-piece collection of one-of-a-kind garments and bags created entirely from upcycled, reclaimed, and deadstock materials. Think towels turned into tote bags, old bedsheets reimagined as jackets, and discarded polo shirts stitched into shorts. We dusted off our sewing machines, raided closets and donation bins, and tapped into the magic of what already exists.
This project is about more than just clothes. It’s a practice in transformation, care, and creative rebellion. We designed style profiles for our collective members, thought deeply about how we want to be seen, and crafted pieces that reflect those wishes, all while reducing waste and rejecting the fast fashion cycle.
Each item holds layers of memory, texture, and intention. From Brooklyn belt factory webbing to vintage ‘80s charms, everything is made with love, storytelling, and a wink. Some pieces are adorned. Some are loud. Most are not for sale (except a few fanny packs), they’re offerings, examples, invitations.
The Remix is a remix of culture, craft, and care. It’s a celebration of process, adornment, and imagining alternatives that feel better, look better, and are better.
The Remix Fanny Packs
ADORNMENT
Adornment is done in collaboration with Tuft the World and can be ordered directly through Tuft the World’s website
SOFT SPACES: HOME GOING
SOFT SPACES: HOME GOING
We debuted a collection of original art pieces called Soft Spaces: Home Going.
This body of work that sits in the in-between, between memory and migration, between here and back home, between feeling like a cultural insider and always being just a little outside of it. As a collective of misfit creatives that share migration, our relationship to home is layered. When we’re away, our accents, our foods, our gestures mark us as Caribbean, but when we return, we’re cousins to our culture, close, but not quite. This project is about holding onto home in the ways we can, through the signs, sounds, and everyday materials that root us. In this next phase, we’re pushing deeper into the textures of belonging. Hand-painted signs and braided hairstyles become wayfinders, markers of direction, of self-determination, of knowing where we’ve been even when the path isn’t clear. Fruits like mango, cocoa, banana, and coconut show up again and again, not just as symbols of sweetness, but as reminders of labor, trade, and the ways our histories are tied to land and movement. We’ll be working with burlap coffee sacks, layering on print, paint, and collage, letting the roughness of the material speak to migration’s frictions, what gets carried, what gets left behind. Our figures, caught in moments of play or rest, challenge the idea that movement always has to be about struggle. Sometimes, migration is joy. Sometimes, it’s just being still and knowing you belong.
If you are interested in purchasing work from this series, email us, sales@mzicar.com for the pricelist and availability.
AR ENHANCEMENT OF ORIGINAL WORKS
We are blending analog and digital processes and experimenting with AR activations of some of the original works.
GALLERY
ABOUT DIAPHANOUS
Diaphanous: In it’s full iteration Diaphanous is a multi room experience. An immersive collection of art telling stories and guiding guests through a whimsical imaginative collection of experiences and material objects. This collection blends art, technology, and history to re-imagine and re-tell stories of the African Diaspora that have been excluded or marginalized due to racial and gender biases. Each offering embodies a theme of something or someone that could only exist now but reframed as if it did exist in a prior time, space, or dimension. we have proken d down this projects into a thematic catagories, Going Places, Ile Omi: House of Water, Soft Spaces and The Bottom End. This group of work is an extension of our Diaphanous series. You can learn more Diaphanous here.
NOTES FROM DIAPHANOUS
NOTES FROM DIAPHANOUS
Notes from Diaphanous is a collection of behind-the-scenes material culture and prototypes from the Diaphanous project. This exhibition, features a motion-responsive installation, AR canvases, and detailed plans for the project. For this iteration of the exhibition, we will be focusing on soft spaces, channeling Sankofa through archival images, imagined photographs, and textile art that emphasize protection and preservation. Underpinned by the philosophy of Sankofa as a means to imagine the future, this exhibition is a blend of old and new technologies and protective practices.
