THIS ISSUE OF THE LAND, FOOD, AND FREEDOM JOURNAL IS A MEDITATION ON THE HARMONY BETWEEN PEOPLE AND THE EARTH, AND THE INFINITE WAYS BLACK COMMUNITIES RECLAIM SPACE, IMAGINATION, AND POWER GLOBALLY. Through art and storytelling, we depict the living threads of land stewardship, ecological kinship, self-determination, and futurist visions. The artists featured here remind us that art is not only reflection, but a practice of world-building—a call to dream, to repair, and to reimagine our path toward liberation.

On the cover, Jai Simone reshapes fragments into Black dreamscapes that honor joy, ancestry, and resistance. Their collages, including Behold! The Floodgates of Heaven, archive a practice on the brink of disappearance while offering visions where Black life is sustained by memory, kinship, and unbound dreaming.

Alexis Akua channels ancestral lineage through natural pigments and plant medicine in Nebedaye. Her work, created with moringa leaves, bridges cosmology, ecology, and spirit, and reminds us of the healing kinship between humans and the natural world.

With explosive vibrancy, April Bey expands queerness and diaspora into realms of speculative futurism. Their piece Remember That One Summer You Fell Down a Blue Hole and That Whale Asked You About Queer Pineapples? layers textiles, glitter, and surreal iconography into stunning portraits of freedom and beauty. Through her work, Bey insists that Black futures are already alive, and radiant, in the present.

Through photography, Tirrea Billings reclaims agriculture as liberation. Her series Sustainable Farming of the Future documents Vanguard Ranch in Virginia, a site where Black land stewardship is a tool of freedom, memory, and collective survival. Billings reframes farming as not only subsistence and spiritual, but a source of political resistance as well.

Brazilian artist Mayk Brambilla merges collage and abstraction in Causas e Lares (Causes and Homes), where memory and imagination converge to reimagine paths once forgotten. His work honors the inner child and reclaims resilience, transforming fragments into fertile visions of belonging.

In The Tools of Our Creation, Taeya Boi-Doku grounds us in Ghanaian foodways and the ancestral wisdom woven into ceremony. Her photos center land, tools, and ritual, reminding us that knowledge lives in both landscape and kinship, sustaining us across multiple generations.

Nwadike Mayowa invites us to pause with Smell Thy Roses, a piece rooted in Nigerian heritage that considers rest a radical act. Through layered painting, he celebrates presence as sacred, urging us to honor joy, small victories, and the fleeting moments that bloom within and around us.

In Love is the Root of All Freedom, Mercy Thokozane Minah offers a digital piece envisioning queer futures and communal abundance. Their work uplifts Black queer elders and imagines freedom as both nourishment and possibility, reminding us that love itself is at the root of all liberation.

Together and individually, these artists continue to expand the terrain of imagination and belonging. Their work not only reflects the world as it is, it reveals what it could be. 

May their visions inspire us all to move toward liberation in wonder, in courage, and in full color.

In joy and solidarity,

‍TABIA LISENBEE-PARKER