IYA: The Art of Remembrance

Photographer Ashley Chappell  Stylist Shola Shodipo  Hair Christina Rendall   MUA Sasha Lutfullina    Models Brenda Mutoni  + Kadia Bah

"I don't think it's about the future," Ashley Chappell says when people describe her work as Afrofuturism. "It's about recognizing what has always been there."

That single sentence reveals the philosophy behind IYA, a body of work that moves beyond conventional portraiture to explore memory, spirituality, ancestry, and the sacred inheritance carried within Black women. Named after the Yoruba word for "mother," the series invites viewers into a world where mythology and memory exist alongside one another, where identity is never fixed, and where photography becomes less about documentation than revelation.

Chappell's path to photography was anything but conventional. After complications from lupus forced her to leave a career in nursing, she turned to the medium as a way of making sense of grief, memory, and the unseen. Today, working between fine art and editorial photography, she has developed a visual language defined by painterly portraiture, symbolism, and an intuitive use of color. Her work has been featured by Vogue, Lenscratch, and Der Greif, exhibited in Reflections in Black: A Reframing, curated by Deborah Willis, and she is represented by Ford Artists.

Yet despite the intentionality of her photographs, Chappell says the work rarely begins with a fully formed idea. "I'm usually led by intuition," she explains. "I never go in and say, 'This is the project we're doing today.' It's usually like a vision in my head that I see, and it's hard to explain verbally. I work really closely with a team I trust who understand what I'm trying to say. I think the work is spiritual, and we are being led to make this work. I think I am still discovering how powerful this work is."

That reliance on intuition has shaped her practice from the very beginning.

"I came to photography to escape my reality," she says. "I saw artists who were using photography in that way. They built worlds. I started to have visions and dreams and practiced constructing worlds. I was always drawn to paintings and wanted the work to feel like a painting."

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That desire to construct worlds rather than simply document them became even more profound after her diagnosis with lupus. Living with a chronic illness fundamentally changed her relationship with time, presence, and the body—ideas that now echo throughout IYA.

"Having lupus is a very tough thing," she says. "I think the hardest part isn't just being sick but the anxiety from how unpredictable it can be. I can be fine one minute and in the hospital the next."

Rather than separating those experiences from her creative practice, Chappell allows them to shape the way she sees."I see life differently. Time and place aren't the same for me. That's why in the work I try to collapse time and place. I also see the world in different dimensions. I have a different appreciation for life that you only get when you come so close to death. I bring a lot of my emotions to the work. Love, care, pain, and grief all seep through, so the photographs often hold both beauty and sorrow."

That collapse of time becomes one of IYA's defining characteristics. Its figures seem suspended between history and mythology. Faces are veiled, blurred, doubled, or transformed, resisting immediate recognition and inviting a slower encounter.

"It makes them feel numinous and mythical, lifting them out of this reality and into a place that is larger than this life we know," Chappell says. "I want their presence to be felt and not just consumed."

For her, concealment is not about withholding identity. It is about expanding it.

"Black people have often been looked at before they have been truly seen," she explains. "Concealment allows these figures to represent a collective, not just an individual, holding many histories, emotions, and possibilities. It is my hope that by recognizing ourselves in one another, we're reminded that our stories are deeply connected."

Color functions in much the same way. Throughout IYA, it becomes emotional language rather than visual description. "Color is one of the main ways I communicate emotion, spirituality, and ancestry," she says. "I use it almost like a painter. Rather than describing reality, color creates an emotional and spiritual atmosphere that invites viewers to feel something before they understand it." Drawing from African textiles, flowers, fashion, and the richness of Black cultural life, Chappell transforms ordinary spaces into sacred ones where memory, grief, ancestry, and hope coexist.

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"I listen to myself and the room and the people around me. I let mistakes happen. I experiment." She frequently incorporates shutter drag into her practice, embracing the unpredictability of the technique. "I've practiced it enough to understand it, but ultimately the stars have to align to get the right image. I don't take credit for that. I try to be really creative in collaboration with not just my team, but the universe."

Fashion, too, becomes a language within IYA. Rather than functioning as decoration, clothing restores histories interrupted by displacement and erasure. "Growing up, I remember watching Roots and being deeply affected by seeing how enslaved people were stripped of so much of their identity, including the way they dressed," Chappell recalls. "Clothing wasn't just fabric. It carried culture, status, individuality, and dignity."

"In many ways, my work is an attempt to restore some of what was taken. Fashion isn't decoration to me. It's an act of restoration."

Working alongside stylist Shola Shodip, she drew upon African history and cultural references to create garments that feel timeless while remaining deeply rooted in heritage.

That commitment extends beyond aesthetics. It reshapes the way Black people are represented altogether.

"Historically, Black people have often been photographed through lenses of documentation, struggle, or stereotype," Chappell says. "While those stories matter, I also wanted to create space for mystery, mythology, tenderness, and the sacred."

For Chappell, portraiture becomes an act of recognition rather than representation.

"When I look at a Black woman, I don't just see the person standing in front of me. I see history, resilience, divinity, imagination, and possibility. My photographs are an attempt to make that visible." That philosophy also explains why IYA refuses to belong to a single historical moment. "I don't want them confined to one historical moment or one narrative. They belong to the past, the present, and the future all at once. Grief taught me that time isn't linear. Memory, ancestry, and spirit don't exist that way either. They move through us constantly." Mystery remains equally essential.

"I think mystery invites people to participate rather than simply consume. Not everything has to be explained to be understood." She believes Black audiences often recognize something instinctively within the work. "They may not be able to explain every symbol, but they understand the feeling because it belongs to a shared history and cultural memory. I don't feel the need to translate every part of that experience. The work can still welcome everyone while allowing some things to remain held within the community that shaped it."

As her practice continues to evolve, Chappell's attention is beginning to shift beyond portraiture toward the landscape itself.

"The land has also been colonized and abused, and it's something I'm passionate about," she says. "I've begun photographing the land with the same care and philosophy in an attempt to reveal how magical it is, how alive it is, and how deeply connected it is to Blackness as well." Whether photographing people or place, Ashley Chappell's work is ultimately concerned with revealing what cannot always be seen. Through intuition, symbolism, color, and memory, IYA asks viewers to move beyond observation and toward recognition. It reminds us that identity is never confined to a single moment, that history is something we continue to carry, and that divinity is not something waiting to be discovered somewhere beyond ourselves. It has always been here.

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