Art & ancestral memory.

Story is not simply something we tell. It’s a way of knowing.

Art & Ancestral Memory:

Art is one of the oldest ways human beings remember.

Through installation, storytelling, photography, ritual, and participatory practice, I explore ancestry, migration, identity, memory, and the invisible threads that connect generations. My artistic work invites viewers not simply to observe, but to enter into a relationship with their own histories and imagine new possibilities for collective healing.

The Legacy of Bowls and Branches

(2026)

The Legacy of Bowls and Branches is an installation exploring matrilineal memory, ancestral continuity, and the living transmission of identity. Ancestry is not treated as past tense; the dead remain in conversation with the living, and lineage unfolds as an active exchange of memory, migration, survival, and becoming. The installation functions as a multi-dimensional map of continuity, tracing a continuum of 178 years (1847-2025), 40 family members, and eight generations—from my Great-Great-Grandmother, Catalina Blyden (born 1847 in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, transitioned 1936 in Sanchez, Dominican Republic), to my Great-Great-Nephew, Jax Miles Burnett (born 2025 in Jacksonville, North Carolina). The bowls and leaves are handmade paper; each generation is represented by a unique color, and the branches and logs are from Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, PA.

a participatory research and artistic inquiry into the lives of women across the African diaspora. This ongoing project explore the stories, migrations, resilience, creativity, and wisdom of women whose lives illuminate the interconnected histories of Africa and its diasporas. Through oral history, collaborative research, artistic practice, and public engagement, the work creates spaces where personal narratives become collective memory and where remembrance becomes a pathway toward healing and future possibility.

Generations of Light

(2023 – Ongoing)

an exploration of the identities we inherit, conceal, perform, and reclaim. Invisible Identities examines the spaces between race, culture, gender, migration, and belonging. Inspired by my own journey growing up between cultures, this body of work asks how identity is shaped by the stories we tell, the stories we inherit, and those left untold. It invites viewers to reflect on the many visible and invisible ways we navigate the world while searching for home, community, and self. This body of work has been shown at universities, galleries, museums, and festivals in Ohio, California, and Arizona.

Invisible Identities

(2009 – 2025)

Exhibit: A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back at Urban Arts Space Columbus, OH. All other photo credits for additional photos: Photographer, BasSheva (Sonia) Manjon

Exhibit: An Idea Called Tomorrow, a collaborative contemporary art and civil rights exhibition co-hosted by the California African American Museum (CAAM) and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Organizations are living cultures.

Rather than viewing organizations as structures to manage, I approach them as living ecosystems shaped by relationships, stories, shared purpose, and collective imagination. Drawing upon decades of leadership in higher education, philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, and community partnerships, I accompany communities as they cultivate healthier ways of learning, leading, collaborating, and flourishing.

100 Families: Art and Social Change

⋇

Participatory Research Collectives

⋇

Think Tanks

⋇

Shared Governance and Culture Cultivation

100 Families: Art and Social Change ⋇ Participatory Research Collectives ⋇ Think Tanks ⋇ Shared Governance and Culture Cultivation 100 Families: Art and Social Change ⋇ Participatory Research Collectives ⋇ Think Tanks ⋇ Shared Governance and Culture Cultivation

The Diasporic Women's Commons

Drawing upon Indigenous and diasporic feminine wisdom traditions, artistic practice, scholarship, cooperative economics, and collective healing, the Commons seeks to cultivate spaces where women reconnect with ancestral knowledge, restore relationships disrupted by colonization and displacement, and imagine new ways of living together grounded in reciprocity, abundance, and peace.

an emerging international initiative rooted in the belief that remembrance is a pathway to liberation.

Sacred Feminine Practice:

Transformation is also personal.

My own practice continues to evolve through ongoing study in sacred feminine healing traditions, contemplative practice, and embodied approaches to transformation. I believe lifelong learning is itself a sacred practice, and I bring both humility and curiosity to this unfolding work.

This personal journey informs how I gather with others, creating spaces that honor reflection, intuition, creativity, relationship, and the wisdom carried within the body.

Selected Publicationsand Exhibits

Selected Artistic, Research, and Scholarly Practice

The Legacy of Bowls and Branches (2026). A multidisciplinary installation tracing eight generations of matrilineal lineage through handmade cotton-linter paper, branches, family photographs, genealogy, and oral history. The work investigates memory, migration, ancestry, and the transmission of cultural knowledge through material practice.Women Who Carry the Light: A Forty-Year Inquiry (1986–2026). A multi-decade artistic and ethnographic inquiry examining Afro-Dominican matrilineal knowledge, migration, identity, and cultural memory through visual art, oral history, genealogy, documentary practice, and community engagement. The project explores how women carry, preserve, and transform knowledge across generations and geographies.Invisible Identity (2006; reimagined 2026). A multimedia body of work examining diasporic identity, belonging, and the politics of visibility. Revisiting the project two decades later foregrounds how understandings of race, culture, identity, and self evolve through lived experience and artistic practice.Birds of Passage (2008). Video documentary emerging from doctoral research on four generations of Dominican women in California. Through oral history and visual storytelling, the film examines migration, acculturation, cultural memory, identity, and intergenerational experience.

Current Projects

The Rymer Sisters, book manuscript. A book-length narrative weaving family oral histories, archival research, and contemporary interviews to examine matrilineal memory, migration, ancestry, and Afro-Dominican identity.Mothers’ Memoirs, oral history project. An oral history project preserving family memory, migration narratives, cultural knowledge, and intergenerational experience through a life story.Generations of Light, interdisciplinary research project. An oral history and artistic research project with six nieces and one great-niece exploring how Afro-Dominican identity, belonging, cultural inheritance, and lived experience are transmitted across generations through storytelling, while considering the futures they hope to create.The Making of The Legacy of Bowls and Branches, documentary film. A documentary chronicling the creation of The Legacy of Bowls and Branches, including its material processes, genealogical research, and matrilineal storytelling.Together, these projects form interconnected threads within a living archive of Afro-Dominican women’s histories, bringing oral history, genealogy, archival research, exhibitions, documentary film, writing, and artistic practice into relationship. Family memory becomes a dynamic form of knowledge carried, interpreted, made visible, and transformed across generations.

Selected Publications and Articles

Mañjon, S. (2022). “The Difference Is—My Lived Experience!” In gloria j. wilson, Joni B. Acuff, & Amelia M. Kraehe (Eds.), A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back. University of Arizona Press.Mañjon, S., Ndzuta, A., Greene, C., Sarkar, K., Flores, N., & Guo, W. (2016). “A Transdisciplinary Approach to Mentoring through Collaboration.” Visual Inquiry: Learning & Teaching Art, 5(3), 353–367.Mañjon, S., & Guo, W. (2015). “Think Tank: A Collaborative Approach to Student Learning, Organizational Assessment, and Community-Based Arts.” Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, 4(2), 57–75.Melsop, S., Mañjon, S., & Collins, K. (2014). “3 Voices: Curating Careers as Publicly Engaged Artists, Designers, and Scholars.” Public: A Journal of Imagining America, 2(2).Mañjon, S., & Moreno Vega, M. (2012). A Snapshot: Landmarking Community Cultural Arts Organizations Nationally: The Impact of Public Policy on Community Arts Funding. National Endowment for the Arts.Mañjon, S. (2007). Crafting a Vision for Art, Equity, and Civic Engagement: Convening the Community Arts Field in Higher Education. California College of the Arts.Mañjon, S. (2004). “The Challenge of Identity: The Dominican Experience in California.” In M. Turner & M. Moreno Vega (Eds.), African Diaspora Points of Unity. Global Afro Latino and Caribbean Initiative Archive, Hunter College, CUNY.

Selected Exhibitions & Installations

The Legacy of Bowls and Branches (July 14–August 15, 2026). Installation included in The Black Madonna & Other Sacred Spaces, Urban Arts Space, Columbus, Ohio.Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California (forthcoming, December 8, 2026–February 16, 2027). Installation included in A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back, Joseph Gross Gallery, School of Art, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.Aqueous Memory Archive and Exhibit (June–September 2025). Contributing Artist, Oakland, California.Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California (May 21–June 29, 2024). Installation included in A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back, Urban Arts Space, Columbus, Ohio.Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California (2014–2016). Video and photographic installation, Ohio State University Student Union and Thompson Library, Columbus, Ohio.Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California (2009–2010). Video and photographic installation included in An Idea Called Tomorrow, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, California.100 Families Oakland: Art & Social Change (2007). Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California.

Selected Documentary & Video Work

The Making of The Legacy of Bowls and Branches (2026–present). Documentary in progress chronicling the creation of The Legacy of Bowls and Branches, including its material processes, genealogical research, and matrilineal storytelling.100 Families Oakland: Art & Social Change (2007). Executive Producer. Thirty-minute documentary co-created with the City of Oakland government television station, KTOP.Crafting a Vision for Art, Equity, and Civic Engagement: Convening the Community Arts Field in Higher Education (2007). Editor and producer/director of supplementary DVD, California College of the Arts, Oakland, California.Birds of Passage (2004). A documentary video emerging from doctoral research examining the impact of immigration on four generations of Dominican and Dominican American women in one family, using organic inquiry.Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture: Tapa Making and Community Collaboration (2004). Filmmaker/Producer, California College of the Arts.