Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs has named North Charleston artist Akua Page the winner of this year’s design competition for the official poster of the MOJA Arts Festival, an eight-day celebration of Black arts, culture and heritage held each fall. Page, a Gullah Geechee interdisciplinary artist, cultural educator and naturalist, will see her design serve as the visual centerpiece of this year’s festival programming.
The winning poster features an illustration of a girl wearing sunglasses, with her pigtails styled to incorporate the flags of the four countries and cultures the festival is spotlighting this year: Jamaica, Barbados, Sierra Leone and the Gullah Geechee culture of the Lowcountry. Page has said her artistic practice draws heavily on Gullah Geechee history, storytelling traditions and environmental themes, describing her approach as using the natural world as a map for telling the story of Gullah Geechee people across generations.
MOJA has run for decades as one of the city’s signature cultural celebrations, honoring the lasting contributions of the African Diaspora through visual art, music, dance and other programming spread across more than a week each fall. The festival draws participants and visitors from across the region who take part in ticketed performances alongside free public events tied to the celebration’s cultural themes.
Page’s poster will go on sale starting next week at two Charleston cultural venues: the Cannon Arts Center, which serves as headquarters for the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and the City Gallery at Waterfront Park. The design will also be available for purchase during the festival’s finale event, which caps this year’s MOJA celebration at Hampton Park. Festival organizers have said selecting a rotating slate of local and regional artists to design the annual poster has become one of the ways the celebration highlights new voices in the Lowcountry’s arts community each year.
