What We Carry

What We Carry
by Arun Drummond
Artist Talk Video
October 3 – November 22, 2025

What We Carry explores the inheritance, both visible and invisible, that moves with us across generations. Drummond’s work reflects on the weight of memory, culture, and identity, while also acknowledging the fragility of what can be lost. Rooted in the traditions of Gullah culture yet speaking more broadly to diasporic and human experience, the series considers how history is preserved, how it fades, and how it resurfaces in unexpected ways.

Each piece becomes a vessel for this reflection. The choice of unbleached linen echoes both the rawness of history and the delicacy of memory, while the use of authentic sweetgrass baskets connects the work to craft traditions that carry stories in their weave. Unfinished baskets are left intentionally, not as omissions but as reminders that culture is not static and that what we carry continues to evolve.

This body of work is about resilience as much as it is about burden. It reflects on the stories passed down through family, the silent legacies of struggle and survival, and the joys and sorrows that shape identity. In revealing what is held close and what is at risk of erasure, What We Carry honors memory while insisting on the possibility of renewal.

What do you carry?

About the Artist

Arun Drummond is a Charleston-based multidisciplinary artist whose work draws from Gullah traditions, Southern history, and contemporary Black culture. His paintings—often created on  linen canvas and layered with sweetgrass basketry—explore themes of ancestral memory, land, labor, and transformation.

A former gallery manager turned full-time painter, Drummond now runs the Drummond Studio Gallery on Charleston’s Eastside. A space dedicated to storytelling and the celebration of both emerging and established artists. His work is featured in the museum stores of the Gibbes Museum of Art and the International African American Museum in Charleston.