Artist Statement

As an exhibition, Pray for Rain explores both physical and spiritual dimensions of migration as elements of the experience that are often overlooked or rarely discussed. This exploration is grounded in personal memories of my grandmother, a devoted gardener who migrated from Ghana and offered her prayers to the new land she could never quite call home. The exhibition’s title is, at once, a position, a statement, and a prescription, for the emigrant who is fundamentally a seeker of safety and sustenance.

The exhibition asks:

What does it mean to pray for rain?

To seek nourishment amid uncertainty?

To surrender to trust in moments of deep vulnerability?

The research underpinning these works looks to nature for insight into how living things adapt and thrive in new environments. It follows the nomadic paths of four plants—sorghum (Sudano-Sahelian bicolor), besobela (Ethiopian holy basil), okra, and tobacco—along parallel routes of African migration. In tracing these botanical journeys, the exhibition uncovers intertwined stories of transformation. Drawing from papermaking techniques, these plants (and raindrops) serve as the primary materials in the works presented here.

Through their organic forms, these works imagine themselves as brief glimpses into the embryonic, yet assured stages of transformation. They are prayers in progress.

Ama BE, Luce Center Artist-in-Residence 2024-2025

Memoriam

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of my maternal grandmother, Madam Mary Akosua Benyako, and to Ned Bachman, youth leader at Foundry United Methodist Church who taught us to ask questions, serve community and attune to the Divine in humble spaces.

Gallery Reflection

To Pray for Rain is to hope for nourishment in uncertain terrain. It is a posture of vulnerability and a gesture of faith. In Pray for Rain, Ama BE honors the quiet, often invisible processes of migration. When home is no longer something tangible, the spiritual and physical meet in the search for new footing.

Scripture tells countless stories of people uprooted and on the move: Abraham setting out not knowing where he was going, Ruth gleaning in a foreign land, and Elijah praying for rain on a mountaintop. They are stories not just of movement, but of becoming. These scriptures point us toward rocky places, where the need for sustenance is physical and spiritual. And what of the journeys unrecorded? In the moments between verses and miracles, what humble prayers have been offered?

In Pray for Rain, Ama BE invites us into soft, unfolding spaces of transformation. Consider how her work can prompt contemplation for uncertainties of our own and for greater curiosity toward the quiet metamorphoses of those around us. In this space, we can ask ourselves: Whose migrations remain invisible to us? What does it mean to be tender with the process of becoming? What prayers have accompanied our own migrations: spiritual, physical, or emotional? How are the prayers of others shaping the world we live in?

Let this space be one of reverence for memory, for land, for journeys, and for transformation. Let it be a place to pray for rain.

Madeline Drewes, Exhibition Coordinator

Luce Center for Arts and Religion