Current Work - "Legacy, Restored"

About the Artist

My artistic journey began with a question triggered by experiencing the lack of representation in spaces that archived history and culture, I constantly asked: Where was my reflection in the grand halls of art and history? This feeling propelled me to create Portraits for the Culture, an outward-facing mission to document the vibrant tapestry of Black life—our rituals, families, and beliefs—as defined by the community itself. That series was a wide-angle lens capturing a culture that deserved to be seen and preserved.

Today, that lack of representation is more deliberate. State-sanctioned campaigns of erasure are growing in their blatant attempts to rewrite the legacies of people who have been historically "left out." Legacy, Restored is my direct response to this current state of affairs. This work is a necessary evolution, and I believe it is more important now than ever. It turns the lens inward to reckon with the personal cost of historical erasure before turning it back out to the world with a new, urgent purpose: to restore what is being actively dismantled.

This project is my act of restoration—for myself, for my community, and for a history that deserves not only to be remembered but to be revered.

• Check out my full bio here: Visual Artist - Portraits for the Culture 

• Check out Portraits for the Culture, the project that inspired this work: Visual Artist - Bio 

• Check out my running list of erased legacies of black and brown people: Visual Artist - List of Revisions 

If you have a legacy, you think should be mentioned, submit to this email (rohaun@gmail.com)

Part 1: The Nature of Legacy

A legacy is the imprint a person or group leaves on the world, passed from one generation to the next. While that can include material assets, the most enduring legacies are the values, wisdom, and ideals that others find meaningful. It might be a family’s spirit of generosity or an activist's unwavering courage. Keeping these legacies alive is a deeply human choice. We recognize their worth and consciously decide to carry them forward, whether we’re bound by family ties or united by a common cause. 

We instinctively share these legacies through oral tradition—the stories that shape our families and communities. But this reliance on the spoken word is also a vulnerability. A legacy can easily be broken by neglect, turmoil, or the kind of pain that silences stories altogether. That fragility demands that we become its guardians. It becomes our responsibility to defend, restore, and fight for that inheritance when necessary. In the end, a legacy isn’t passed down by force; it’s kept alive by a humble willingness to share, allowing its wisdom to ripple forward. logue on how we learn to restore and preserve what has been fractured.

Part 2: Legacy, Restored

This exploration was not born from headlines, but from silence. My journey into the meaning of legacy began with the death of my father by suicide. His loss created a profound void where a legacy should have been. In its place was not a peaceful emptiness, but a space filled with unspoken stories, fractured traditions, and a wisdom I could no longer access.

I came to understand this silence as its own form of erasure—a deeply personal breaking of a chain. It is difficult to share a legacy intertwined with so much pain. The stories of my father’s incredible life were often eclipsed by the trauma of his death, and our family’s oral tradition faltered. It weakened not from a lack of love, but from the weight of a grief that words alone could not carry.

It is only through my own healing that I can begin the work of restoration. For me, as an artist, that process starts in the studio. The act of painting, reflecting, and interpreting allows me to navigate the pain and find a path forward where conversation felt impossible. My artistic practice became the bridge back to my father’s memory, allowing me to separate the man from the tragedy and restore the values he embodied. This work was not done in isolation; it was deepened through conversations with friends and family, whose shared stories provided clarity, support, and a collective path toward healing.

This project, Legacy, Restored, confronts the essential question that grew from my experience: How do we restore a legacy that has been broken? It is a question I see reflected in the wider world, where the effort to misrepresent or erase collective histories is an unfortunate and ever-present reality. But the core of the work remains rooted in that first, personal wound.

The project investigates this in three parts:

First, it asks you, the viewer, to question what legacy means to you. It challenges us to see legacy as a living force in our own lives, one that requires our active participation.

Second, it seeks to map the void left by a broken legacy. Through a series of allegorical paintings, the project gives a symbolic language to the internal trauma, paranoia, and dissolution that I first felt. It explores the psychological cost of being disconnected from your own history.

Finally, the project moves from the wound to the work of restoration. This series of portraits and accompanying video interviews immortalizes the faces, voices, and truths of impactful individuals willing to share their stories. By adding the physical act of preservation—the painting, the recording—to the renewed power of oral tradition, we fortify these legacies. We are turning personal histories into enduring monuments of resilience and wisdom.

One half of the project shows the wound of absence; the other presents the powerful remedy of presence. Together, they are an assertion that a legacy, even one broken by trauma, can be restored—and that once restored, it can never truly be erased again.

Erasure of Legacy & the need for new methods of capture: 

In a climate where the integrity of Black and brown legacies is being actively challenged in our books and museums, we must expand our methods of preservation beyond oral tradition. By embracing recordings, ceremonies, and art, we declare that you do not need to be famous to be monumental. This work is about holding space for our own histories and celebrating legacies that demand to be restored. 

The Dialogue: At the heart of Legacy, Restored is a collaborative inquiry into the nature of legacy, built upon a sacred partnership between the artist as Host and a select group of individuals as Co-Hosts.

This project was born from a personal reckoning. While trying to understand the nature of legacy in reference to Black culture and my own family history, I was confronted by a painful silence. In conversations with the individuals, I interviewed and painted in the past, a familiar pattern emerged: a fractured recall of their own family legacies, often for reasons mirroring my own. There was fracture in the collective memory, the stories muted, and the consequences were echoing down through the generations.

This shared experience has led me to these three guiding questions, which form the heart of our dialogue. They are designed to explore our shared journey from understanding legacy to the work of restoring it.

1. Defining Our Inheritance: What is a Legacy to You?

To begin, I want to understand what "legacy" means to you personally. We often think of it as something passed down, but the what and why can be different for everyone. Is it a specific value from your family? An ideal you learned from your community? Or something you are building yourself? Thinking about where legacies come from and what makes them valuable, how would you define the idea of a legacy?

2. The Broken Chain: How Do We End Up Needing to Restore?

Legacies are fragile. Before we can talk about restoring them, we have to understand how they become broken in the first place. Sometimes, it’s an internal break, caused by a personal pain or trauma so great that a family simply stops telling its own stories. Other times, it’s an external attack through the intentional erasure of our histories. From your perspective, how do we end up in a position where a legacy needs to be fought for and restored?

3. The Living Monument: How Will Your Legacy Endure?

We know that oral traditions, while powerful, can fade over time. This final question is about making sure your legacy doesn't. Looking forward, I’d like you to identify the single most important legacy you feel responsible for carrying. What is that core story, value, or truth? And crucially, beyond speaking it aloud, what are the ways you are preserving it—or hope to preserve it—so that it becomes a lasting monument for generations to come?

Legacy, Restored is my answer. At its heart is the portrait reveal, which I’ve reimagined as a modern ceremony—a ritual, a celebration, and a powerful act of restoration all at once.

The ceremony provides a platform for preserving legacy by blending sacred tradition with new forms. It is inspired by the West African Griot, the living archive and historian who reinforces a village’s collective wisdom through oral tradition. It is also shaped by the communal act of quilt-making, a modern tradition of weaving individual stories into a collective whole. We do this through a sacred trust between the artist as Host and a select group of individuals as Co-Hosts.

The Portrait Reveal

Each portrait created for Legacy, Restored will be unveiled at an intimate and celebratory event. More than a simple art opening, the Portrait Reveal is a communal act of remembrance. Hosted for the Guest and their chosen circle of friends, family, and community, this event honors their story and officially welcomes their portrait into the collection. These powerful moments will be filmed, capturing the living, breathing heart of the project and transforming a private legacy into a shared, public testimony.

Solo Show 2026

The culmination of this multi-year effort will be a major solo exhibition in 2026. This curated show will weave together every element of the project to create a comprehensive, immersive experience at Quid Nunc Art Gallery 

Tangible outcomes of the Legacy, Restored project include:

• A Major Exhibition: A powerful, curated collection of approximately 25-30 original paintings and photographs.

• A Definitive Coffee Table Book: A high-quality, published book featuring all artwork, compelling excerpts from the interviews, and essays from the artist and guest contributors.

We are actively seeking partnerships with supporters, collectors, and curators to bring this timely and significant body of work to a global audience.

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