This year's Zora Neale Hurston Festival welcomes African artist Louise Deininger

Kind of like Black Panther's Wakanda, a hypothetical land made by Black people for Black people, Eatonville was founded by African Americans for African Americans. But it's a real place — the oldest all-Black town in the United States. Eatonville is where American literary giant Zora Neale Hurston grew up and a place she later wrote much about, which is why the Preserve Eatonville organization hosts an annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of Arts & Humanities (familiarly known as Zora! Fest).

This year, the festival welcomes African artist Louise Deininger at Eatonville's Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts with the opening reception of a show that will be on view until Dec. 31. On Saturday, Jan. 20, the museum will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Deininger will give a talk at 1 p.m.

We spoke with Deininger via WhatsApp while she was packing to leave her home in Vienna, Austria. She was happy to see Florida's sunshine streaming through the phone screen. She's not from Wakanda, of course, but grew up in Uganda, Kenya and the U.K. "I'm so excited to come to Florida," she exclaimed, just like any Euro tourist.

Deininger told us she chose "fairly new work" for this show, built with a contextual approach. "I started with a gathering of women of color, indigenous women from all over, and we mostly talked about our ancestors. People brought textiles, photographs, strings of fabric, and other tokens to link themselves to their ancestors. One participant brought ashes from Mexico," she recalled. Deininger used the energy from this gathering, as well as the songs, dance, poetry and objects to visualize the voices of the participants, both living and dead.

Her art includes a lot of research. "Oh yeah," she said, "I took a lot of notes to capture not just the stories but the emotions and feelings that arose from these stories." Her paintings are the result of this process, and her work asks the simplest yet most profound question: "Who are we?"

"Tugo Kas to Teko" is one such painting. "It's about the playful nature of our ancestors, and their strength," she replied when asked to translate the title.

"There's a little picture of a grandmother embedded in the painting, and it is about her physical strength and how she played with children." The painting is inspired by many people, she explained, represented perhaps by this one person.

We talked about Afrofuturism, the Black art and design movement that envisions the future through a Black lens, often utilizing science fiction tropes (think Black Panther). Deininger's artwork resonates deeply with this movement, delving into spiritual science, critical thinking and identity to define who we are becoming. "Consciousness comes from who we were, and is about who we are," said Deininger. "As an artist I seek for signs in my research to point the way toward who we are becoming." She shared with us how the emotional and spiritual content of her work led to a vision of the future. "Afrofuturism is just the biggest theme taking place in the social and political world right now!" she exclaimed.

It is certainly the biggest theme of this year's Zora Festival. For the last five years, the festival has explored Afrofuturism with a focus on art, music, or other aspects of human expression. This year's focus is space — specifically, Eatonville's space, with a hint of outer space, too — at a four-day academic conference chaired by Dr. Scot French of the University of Central Florida. "This is the final year of the Afrofuturism cycle; it's the best time to check it out," he advises.

A driving force behind the Zora's five-year Afrofuturism project is Dr. Julian Chambliss, formerly of Rollins College and now at Michigan State University. "Striving toward freedom has required the Black imagination to see new paths and imagine different worlds," says Chambliss, who uses comic books to explore the Black imagination. While some dismiss comic books and superheroes as pulp, Chambliss sees them as a vital mirror held up to our culture.

In addition to Deininger's visual art exhibition and the academic exploration of Afrofuturistic expression, the festival will include a cultural heritage tourism workshop, book readings, walking tours, a progressive reception jointly hosted with the Maitland Art & History Museum, a dinner and cooking class with DaJen Eats chef Jenn Ross, and other gatherings all leading up to the final weekend's Outdoor Festival of the Arts. That weekend, with its carnival atmosphere and live concerts, is probably the best-known part of Zora Fest. (This year's performers include D.C. go-go legends EU and '80s R&B stars Club Nouveau, among others.) But it's worth visiting zorafestival.org/schedule to see how much is going on.