The Fovnder’s Pillars & The Power Loom are site responsive memorial and multimedia installations made up of six digital textile projections, sound, animation, and smart textile visualisation to embed living memories, ancestral knowledge and cosmology into digital cloth, activating public space and brought to life by AI-generated films and (AR). The collabortion between media based artists Meghna Singh and Simon Wood including interdisciplinary artist, fashion researcher, and AFRI Co-Founder Lesiba Mabitsela , first transformed the neoclassical pillars of MIT’s Rogers Building whose founder, William Barton Rogers, was found to have enslaved six individuals from the African continent. By digitally wrapping the columns of the building in six animated textiles, each representing a region of the African continent where the slave trade was most active, the project weaves decolonial practices of freedom-making by fusing colonial architecture with African futurist storytelling rooted in textile traditions. The experience not only reveals suppressed histories but celebrates African interconnectedness. As a communal audio-visual technological experience, it transforms pillars of colonial power into spaces of decolonial expression.
The Founder’s Pillars evolved into a two-part immersive project with the addition of The Power Loom during this years Tribeca Festival in New York. The Founders Pillars was displayed on the New York Stock Exchange recognising the building as a symbol of capitalism built on the commodification of human lives. The same fabrics activated its columns, transforming the pillars of institutional power into dynamic sites of remembrance and resistance. An accompanying installation at Water Street Projects features a traditional single-heddle loom, synonymous with African weaving craft traditions, that digitally weaves African fabrics whilst revealing the ancestral knowledge embedded in their designs.
Following its initial showing at MIT, The Fovnders Pillars has been displayed on Texas Capitol at the Layers of Place AR exhibition duting SXSW: Austin Film and TV Festival 2026, the Witwatersrand University (WITS) Great Hall during the Fak’ugesi Festival 2025 and the Sarah Baartman Hall at University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2025. The has also recieved an award of distinction for the S+T+ARTS Africa Prize in 2025.
AFRI would like to thank Modupe Oloruntoba (South African-based Journalist, Writer and Consultant), Zinzi de Brouwer (Netherlands-based Fashion Practitioner and Academic), Lamin Ismaila (Ghanaian Community Leader Johannesburg and Rosebank African Market vendor), Julia Watson (Senior Curator) and Angelique Bougaard (Education Curator) at WITS Art Museum for their on going assistance with the research on this project.