Mahogany Gallery Presents The Watchers at the Harlem Fine Art Show
The Watchers: Ancestral Sentinels
Mahogany Gallery presents The Watchers: Ancestral Sentinels
We are excited for our first ever exhibition with with three leaders in the the arts:
(click each name to learn more)
Dr. Imo Nse Imeh - Massachussetts
Patrick Dougher - New York
Salome Jaffe - Florida
Each artists represent portraits and sculptural forms as guardians, figures who stand at the threshold between memory and becoming. Drawing from the visual languages of each artist, the exhibition positions the Black figure not as subject alone, but as sentinel: a witness to history, a protector of culture, and a guide for future generations.
These works exist in liminal space. They hover between abstraction and realism, past and present, material and spiritual. The figures do not shout; they endure. Their presence is quiet but unyielding, embodying the strength of ancestral watchfulness, an ever-present force that safeguards identity, history, and spiritual continuity.
Ancestral Presence as Protection
Across cultures of the African continent and its diaspora, ancestors are not distant figures of the past; they are active participants in the present. In this exhibition, the faces and forms act as sentinels—keepers of memory who stand guard against erasure, distortion, and forgetting.
Imeh’s atmospheric portraits emerge from washes of color and gestural abstraction, as though rising from water, breath, or time itself. His figures feel suspended—poised at the edge of appearance—suggesting ancestral spirits stepping forward to be seen and felt rather than named.
Dougher’s sculptural assemblages function as contemporary masks and crowns, constructed from layered imagery, currency, chains, and historical fragments. These works operate as protective armor and archival vessels, encoding social, political, and economic histories directly onto the human form.
Holding the Line Between Worlds
The watchers hold the line in multiple ways:
Between past and future, ensuring memory is not lost in progress
Between trauma and transcendence, acknowledging pain while insisting on survival
Between visibility and protection, revealing history without surrendering dignity
Each figure stands in resistance through stillness. Their gaze, direct or averted, becomes a form of vigilance. They ask viewers not only to look, but to bear witness.
Stillness as Power
In The Watchers: Ancestral Sentinels, power is not performed through dominance or spectacle, but through presence. The figures remain unmoved, grounded, and resolute. Their quiet endurance reflects a long tradition of Black resilience—where survival itself becomes a radical act.
These sentinels remind us that protection does not always appear as defense; sometimes it appears as watchfulness, memory, and care.
The Watchers
An art show by Mahogany Gallery in New York City
