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(Photo credit: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum / Fabiola Jean-Louis)

Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom is a massive and immersive series comprising embellishments of glass, crystals, shells, sand, metal, and stones are intricately merged with paper to create a world where the ancestors reside—a place where, to access our cosmic selves, we must journey through the portal of our existence into the beautiful chaos of nature.

Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom was organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts.

Fabiola Jean-Louis is a visual activest working in photography, paper textile design, and sculpture. Her work examines the intersectionality of the Black experience, particularly that of women, to address the absence and imbalance of historical representation of African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. She began taking self-portraits as a matter of convenience, shyness, and because she wanted to use her own body to convey the stories she wanted to tell. Later, her work grew to include other subjects, and costumes, as well as sculptures made entirely out of paper . Today, her practice is focused on experimentation using different techniques and disciplines.