You Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar
October 28, 2026 to February 28, 2027
African American Cultural Center Gallery,
at Witherspoon Student Center
Image above: wayfield 14, by ariana Farquharson, 2026, Digital (Midjourney AI)
About this Exhibition
From digital humanist and creative storyteller ariana Farquharson comes her debut satellite exhibition, You Are Here: Geolocating the Self Through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar, at NC State University’s African American Cultural Center Gallery. Created in conversation with Gregg Museum of Art & Design and Maya Freelon’s immersive installation Grounded, the exhibition features 2D and 3D prints, and animations of AI-generated abstract forms called “diasporic wayfields.”
These studies extend ariana’s graduate research into Origination (Where am I? How did I arrive?) as an Ancestral Intelligence (AI) and narrative strategy that may inform how we craft modern immersive experiences. Counter to accepted immersive practices, these studies play with notions of (dis)placement, (dis)orientation and navigation. The wayfields integrate raw and processed natural earth materials (e.g. clay, cotton, indigo, tobacco) familiar to ariana’s Carolina home, a reference to how these materials have historically supported and complicated our understanding of our origins. Distinct from a labyrinth or maze, the diasporic wayfield is both a representation of built structures intended to throw us off of our origin points and of strategic ancestral wayfinding within these strange shape-shifting structures.
Through ancestral notions of inherited and inhabited fluidity and critical collective reflection, You Are Here invites visitors to locate self and home. In doing so, ariana expands Freelon’s exploration of her own origins.
About the Artist
ariana Farquharson is a Charlotte-born visual designer and storyteller whose latest work explores modern immersion through the lens of the Black experience.
Her interests in language and narrative began early. As the daughter of avid readers, she dove into her own genres, including historical fiction, fantasy and magical realism. Wordsmiths like Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Edgar Allen Poe, Gabriel García Márquez and Jonathan Swift became her literary heroes.
ariana pursued her interests academically by earning her Bachelors degrees in Graphic Design (2010) and English (2009) from North Carolina State University. In 2025, she earned a Masters degree in Media Arts, Design and Technology, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities from her alma mater.
Drawing on design, literature, technology, culture and history, ariana’s current practice extends and adapts Black storytelling techniques and honors Ancestral Intelligence for modern immersion theory and technologies like 360° Virtual Reality (VR).
ariana currently lives and works in Raleigh as an instructor in the College of Design at North Carolina State University, and is Maya Freelon’s former teaching assistant. You Are Here is Farquharson’s first solo exhibition. It exists in conversation with Maya Freelon’s Grounded exhibition at the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, which tracks Freelon’s own origins as a professional artist.
Gallery Snapshot
You Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar
