The short film, I Can Heal, follows Renée Stout and her alter-ego, Fatima Mayfield, the conjure woman of the exhibit’s title, Tales of a Conjure Woman. Two voices provide an overlapping narration, reciting the definitions of conjure terminology, The Bible’s “Parable of the Sower,” and a lover’s recipe from Zora Neale Hurston’s book Mules and Men. The scenes shift from the urban environment of Washington, DC, to a water’s edge humming with cicadas, and to the interior of Fatima Mayfield’s home, filled with the objects and artifacts of her conjuring. The film explores, like much of Stout’s work, spirituality, traditional African rituals, and their place in modern America. 

Watch the video below:

-by Anna Crowley, Halsey Institute intern