Making Myth From Memory: How One Artist Is Digitizing Black Spirituality in the 3D Age

In a quiet corner of a digital café, a man sits. He does not move. He does not speak. The world around him glitches, glows, or collapses — but he remains.He’s been seen before: wandering through surreal temples, standing silently as a baby floats in a womb of light, or staring at a burning city. Some call him fictional. I call him memory.

He is the spiritual backbone of my work — a recurring art persona born from fascination, cultural dislocation, and inherited silence. His form may shift between artworks, but his presence never does. And while he may look futuristic — rendered in 3D, placed in virtual scenes — his origin lies in the ancient, sacred heart of Ethiopia: Lalibela.

The Stillness That Watches

My art persona was inspired by the guardians of Lalibela, where a network of medieval rock-hewn churches has quietly held space for over 800 years. I became captivated by the Christian mystics who protect them — men cloaked in white, their faces as unreadable as stone, said to safeguard the Ark of the Covenant itself.But it wasn’t just the legend that struck me — it was their posture. Still. Present. Unshaken by the chaos of time.

They reminded me of Black men I grew up around — men who held the family together by not speaking, who knew that watching was survival. Who believed that to carry culture wasn’t to preach it, but to preserve it.

So I began sculpting that presence into my art.

Memory Rendered in Code

When I create, I begin not with tools, but with intention. My 3D spaces aren’t just visual — they’re cultural archives.I build using Blender, mix texture with imperfection (because “noise = reality”), and apply my design principles like rules of worship:

• Duality & Contrast

• Darkness as a Persona

• Signs of Transition

• Speaking to the Past and Future

Each principle governs how I design — and my art persona embodies them all. He is often cloaked in shadows. His environments glitch or stretch, caught mid-render.He doesn’t smile or pose. He exists.

Whether seated in a Vancouver café (The Downtown Café), drifting in spiritual detachment (Sol), or kneeling before unseen gods (Temple), he reflects the fractured cultural psyche of a diasporic life.

He is not a character.He is a symbol of cultural endurance. He is me. He is us.

Why Digitizing Spirit Matters

Western digital spaces have a tendency to flatten everything into trend. Culture becomes aesthetic. Identity becomes filter. But I believe we can use these very tools — 3D modeling, VR, digital prints — to preserve sacred narratives, not erase them.

When I render my persona in 3D, I’m doing more than making art.I’m asking:

“What does Black stillness look like in a digital world?”“What does an African memory sound like in a synthetic forest?”“Can you code legacy?”

These questions drive my work — and the answers, I’ve found, are never literal.They exist in scenes. In presence. In the eyes of the man who never leaves.

The Future as Archive

As I continue to build my world — through prints, animations, and now physical 3D toys — my art persona evolves. He ages. He questions. He becomes more grounded, but also more mythic.And as more people engage with my work, I realize: this isn't just art. This is cultural documentation.

The man in my art is not just watching the world.He’s recording it.He is memory itself — digitized and preserved, for those who might one day forget.

And in a world that forgets so quickly,remembering is the most radical act I know.