On September 25th, 2026, the Embodying Change Ancestor Altar, an interactive art installation in reverence of change, joy, and resistance, debuts at the 9th Annual Brooklyn Brujeria Festival.
Tended to by Ancestors in Training™, this altar returns as a continued reflection of the times that we find ourselves in. Grief, heartache, and traumas of all kinds - collective and individual - are active parts of our landscape. Despite this, we all have an opportunity to reconnect with the ancestral traditions that helped those who came before us navigate the horrors of their times. This collective joy acts like an heirloom, precious and needed more now than ever, and the Brooklyn Brujeira Festival is one way that this inheritance takes shape.
The Embodying Change Ancestor Altar is a threshold, a gate that is tended to with care that allows festival participants to land, reflect, and connect in a way that meets them where they’re at. Inspired by Octavia Butler’s wisdom that “God is Change” and the powerful orisha Oya, the altar is built as a space of possibility in a world that feels impossible. Oya is represented by the number 9, and since it is the 9th year of the Brooklyn Brujeira Festival, it felt natural to bring this particular installation back. It reminds us that transformation is not only an ending, but also the fertile ground where joy, healing, and transformation can take place. By treating joy as a conscious response to change, rather than a distraction from it, we build cultures of care that resist erasure and harm. This altar, and the practice it embodies, asks us to hold both truths: that grief and rage are valid, and that joy has a rightful place beside them.
Through the dynamic leadership of Chiquita Brujita, those seeking to return to ancestral traditions and magic have an annual opportunity to gather at the festival among kindred spirits, and we are so grateful to return to this space. Festival attendees are invited to step through the threshold of change and imagine a future where healing and justice are not only possible but are already here and shaping the world that our descendants will inherit.
Donations are welcome to support the build. Offerings are welcome! Think symbols associated with Oya and/or transformation: eggplants, pomegranates, flowers. Nature-based offerings will be dropped off after the show.
ABOUT ANCESTORS IN TRAINING™
Ancestors in Training™ is an educational project and lived experience that centers sacred traditions, new technologies, intergenerational healing, and grief work. Launched in 2017, this concept has been taught at Sadie Nash Leadership Project and Mayday Space and traveled to El Museo del Barrio, Weeksville Heritage Center, the Caribbean Cultural Center (CCCADI), Ethel's Club, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Black Feminist Future, Decolonizing Birth, and Allied Media Conferences. To be an Ancestor in Training is to embody the elevated ancestor we want to be in the present moment, while we are still here. We understand that our time here is finite without fear.
Veronica Agard (Ifáṣadùn Fásanmí) (she/her) is a poet, writer, abọ̀rìṣà, community educator, and connector at the intersections of Black identity, wellness, representation, and culture. She curated the Who Heals the Healer series and the conference of the same name and facilitates the Ancestors in Training™ educational project. A joy defender and space holder for over 10 years, she wants to be remembered as a force of nature who created sites of healing. Ancestors in Training, An Abọ̀rìṣà’s Guide to (Beginning) Your Ancestral Healing Journey, arrives on January 12th, 2027 (North Atlantic Books).