 I am Kibibia Janku. I am a performing artist, but I'm also an MFA candidate at the Maryland Institute College of Art. And what I've done is bring all that I am into one place through curatorial practice. My forte is traditional African dance syndrome. Indigo is in itself magic. It's magical because it does these things that just speak to you, that's called to you. It's magical because it has such a rich and dynamic history that goes in so many directions. You see it in the Tareg desert people, where the men are the ones who wrap their faces, wrap their heads in huge turbines, and wrap their faces in indigo cloth, calling themselves the blue people because that protects them. It's believed that the indigo protects them as they cross the desert. It's magical. The Egyptian pharaoh had a sail on his ship and his ship alone that was blue, telling people to part the ways. But it gets different. It gets different because indigo was introduced to America by Eliza Picney. She needed a new crop, and that cash crop was indigo, bringing slavery and changing the waterways and changing the commodity. Well, indigo magic is an exhibition because I'm in an art school, and that is my thesis study. It's an exploration of indigenous content and the way it shows up in African-American art forms. It uses indigo as a lens to focus on the connections between Africa and the Americas. As a color, as a dye, as a commodity, indigo has had fast impact on art and culture worldwide. And it suggests and dignifies connections to so many different places, India, Egypt, oh, mummies, and it's just magical, magical. And it's got this mystique. It's been used as medicine. It's been used through history and shown up in so many ways. Even in Europe, the warriors, it was called the warriors' herb because the warriors painted their faces believing that that blue hue would protect them in battle. Indigo magic, it's a group show. Envision a collection of works, a collection that is blue, not necessarily in color, but a collection that is blue in spirit as well. The artists have been chosen because they're steeped in a regal, majestic blue, their work is, their visions of indigo maybe as a trade commodity or strong African content. The artists include Ernest Chroma. He is a living legacy. He is the oldest of these, and he has much work that is inspired by his travel to Africa. Larry Poncho Brown, he is one of the most renowned artists, but has much work that also inspired by his travel to Africa. This piece right there has people pointing and moving in the path of indigo. Karen McAdoo Clark, also inspired by her journey to Africa, now an excellent potter, but now hand builds and does things that are right there, steeped in her journey to Africa. Karen Buster, these visions were hers before she ever visited the continent of Africa. And once she got there, she found out that what had been coming through her was actually what she would see when she arrived. This photographer has indigo all the way there. These are indigo cakes processed in Africa. That is the side of a village where indigo was died, and then a marketplace where indigo is sold. San Cofa Dance Theater with newly commissioned work entitled Indigo Magic will be part of the experience because I believe that you need to bring people into museums not only by the art on the wall, but also by interacting with people and having public programs. So this Baltimore Girls, it's runway upcycled denim. So you take old stuff and you make it new again and make it funky fly. Tie-dye workshops so that young people can touch and the experience and feel it not only through their breath, their heart, their mind, their body, their spirit, and take a little something home as well. Gallery talks with some of Baltimore's own professionals. Chezia Strand does humanistic studies, examples of indigo tradition through her writing, Kocava Salasi work experience, how African art shows up in Toni Morrison work, and then the last was Mr. Bingham who has a vast collection of indigo and African artifacts. So the place is the Frederick Douglass Isaac Myers Museum because indigo has been such a trade commodity. This museum sits on the pier that slaves were brought into. It sits on the pier where Douglass, Frederick Douglass and Isaac Myers both experienced Baltimore in a new and different kind of way and experienced America in a new and different kind of way just as indigo has changed the lives of many that it's touched. And so. Good bye.