SOMATIQ BLACK @ S/TE 2025
Sep
27

SOMATIQ BLACK @ S/TE 2025

SITE is a one-night contemporary art festival transforming the 12-acre Goat Farm into a vast, living exhibition. Last year’s debut was described by Art Papers as “a clear triumph.”

This year promises monumental art installations, live performances, exhibitions, and open studios—exploring “site” in all its forms: physical, digital, temporal, perceptual, and site-specific.

OPARAH’s newest project, Somatiq Black: Neci, marks a deepening of her commitment to art as a site of communal healing. Somatiq Black is a healing apparatus—a sculptural and sonic installation designed to engage the nervous system of Black women through rhythmic physical objects and immersive audio. It invokes what Oparah refers to as “recessive memory”: ancestral and embodied knowings that remain buried beneath survival but can be reawakened through sound, ritual, and presence.

The subtitle “Neci” comes from the commonly used Black Southern term of endearment for a niece. In this context, the voice of healing arrives through the archetype of the auntie—one who has lived, seen, endured, and now speaks with conviction. The auntie figure carries generational knowledge and authority. She doesn't ask to be heard—she expects it. And her message is simple: You are loved.

Through hand-braided hair, beaded strands, lullabies, found footage, and EFT tapping sequences, Neci becomes a somatic archive—a tender, disruptive, and necessary offering to Black women. It honors the survival modalities born from both oppression and joy, affirming the body not just as a site of trauma, but as a wellspring of recovery.

Olamma Oparah is an Atlanta-based writer, director, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the interior worlds of Black women through sound, image, and embodied ritual. A native of the American South and of Igbo and Afro-Antillian descent, Oparah’s film and installation practice seeks to deconstruct mainstream representations of Blackness while affirming ancestral wisdoms, intuitive memory, and emotional inheritance

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Indie Grits Film Festival
Jan
1

Indie Grits Film Festival

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

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news

 

Artist Project Fund Grantee

Olamma Oparah selected as one of the NBAF Artist Project Fund (APF) awardees. The fund is a $2000 grant and artistic development program for Metro Atlanta artists seeking funds to complete an ongoing project.

 

Atlanta Journal Constitution

“In what feels like the spiritual heart of the exhibition, and its complex blend of transcendence and despair, are three indelible short films by Atlanta filmmaker Olamma Oparah.”

AJC
 
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Laundry Day

ATLANTA FILMMAKERS PRESENT LAUNDRY DAY AT THE INDIE GRITS FILM FESTIVAL

 
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GSU Magazine

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VIBE

Fan-Made Trailer Imagines Aunt Viv's Return To Bel-Air In 'Auntie'

 
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okayplayer.

The Original Aunt Viv Returns in This Creative Parody that Merges 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, 'Us,' & 'Get Out'

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Shadow&Act

This Fan-Made Trailer Reimagines 'The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air' As A Horror Story With The Original Aunt Viv's Return

 
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BlackGirlNerds.com

Jordan Peele Horror Meets Aunt Viv Parody