Da Wada Brought Us & Kept Us
The “Da Wada Brought Us & Kept Us” Collection was intentionally built by Victoria A. Smalls over more than a decade as a reflection of survival, creativity, spirituality, and cultural continuity throughout the African Atlantic Diaspora. Rooted in her upbringing on St. Helena Island and inspired by the enduring traditions of Gullah Geechee people, the collection bridges African artifacts, contemporary art, historical memory, and cultural storytelling across generations and geographies.
The collection was created from Victoria’s desire to preserve and share the artistic expressions, ancestral knowledge, and cultural traditions of African-descended communities shaped by water, migration, enslavement, resistance, and resilience throughout the Atlantic world. Each piece within the collection reflects themes of ancestry, rice culture, spirituality, labor, praise traditions, family, waterways, and the sacred connections between Africa and the coastal South.
The collection features works from internationally recognized and regional artists including James Denmark, Jonathan Green, Charles H. DeSaussure, Diane Britton Dunham, Amiri Geuka Farris, Mary Inabinett-Mack, Michael Boulware Moore, Minister Johnnie Simmons, Christopher “Sancho” Smalls, Victoria A. Smalls, Patricia Elaine Sabree, Synthia Saint James, Cassandra Gillens, Joe Pinckney, Jerry Bennett Taylor, Michael Smalls, and Mahoganee Amiger, among others. The collection also includes African artifacts, sweetgrass baskets by local basket sewers, and cultural literature connected to Lowcountry rice culture traditions.
The “Da Wada Brought Us & Kept Us” Collection has graced the walls of institutions and cultural spaces throughout the Southeast, including the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, Clinton College, the Hampton County Arts Council Stanley Arts Building, the Rice Museum, Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site, the Technical College of the Lowcountry Mather School, and Moores Creek National Battlefield Patriots Hall.
For Victoria, the collection is more than an exhibition of artwork. It is a cultural archive and an act of preservation that honors the enduring survival, creativity, and spiritual strength of African-descended people throughout the African Atlantic world.
Victoria’s leadership and contributions to the arts have been recognized through her selection as a former Maven with The Art of Community: Rural SC and as a Leo Twiggs Arts Diversity Leadership Scholar. Through her work as an artist, curator, collector, and cultural advocate, she continues to support the preservation and advancement of African American and Gullah Geechee artistic traditions throughout the Southeast and beyond.
About The Curator -
Victoria Smals
Victoria A. Smalls is a Gullah Geechee artist, curator, collector, and cultural preservationist whose professional experience in the arts and cultural sector has been shaped through decades of work in galleries, museums, historic preservation, and cultural institutions dedicated to preserving African American and Gullah Geechee heritage. Alongside her curatorial and preservation work, she is also a self-taught visual artist whose creative practice explores themes of ancestry, spirituality, memory, water, land, and the enduring cultural traditions of the African Atlantic Diaspora.
Her early arts career developed through her work with Red Piano Too Art Gallery, one of the leading folk art galleries in the Southeastern United States for more than 35 years. As Gallery Manager and Exhibit Curator, she worked closely with artists, collectors, and exhibitions while developing a strong foundation in visual storytelling, exhibition development, artist representation, and cultural interpretation.
Victoria later served as Director of the York W. Bailey Museum at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District, where she directed and curated exhibitions focused on African American history, Gullah Geechee culture, art, heritage, and community memory. Her work centered on preserving and interpreting the stories, traditions, and creative expressions of the Sea Islands and the broader African Diaspora.
She also contributed to the development and interpretation of Gullah Geechee exhibitions and the inclusion of the Praise House at the International African American Museum, helping ensure that the voices, traditions, and cultural narratives of Gullah Geechee communities were authentically represented within the museum’s exhibitions and interpretive storytelling.
A few Artists Within the Collection
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Synthia Saint James
born February 11, 1949, is an American visual artist, author, keynote speaker, and educator. She is best known for designing the original cover art of the hardcover edition of Terry McMillan's book Waiting to Exhale. She also designed the first Kwanzaa stamp for the United States Postal Service, which was first issued in 1997. Then she designed the 2016 Kwanzaa Forever Stamp.
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Jonathan Green
is an internationally acclaimed and awarded professional artist who graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. His forty-year track record of creating art and extensive inclusions in museum collections and exhibitions throughout many countries has led to his being considered by numerous art critics and reviewers as one of our nation’s outstanding American artists and highly recognized visual master for capturing the positive aspects of American and African American Southern cultures, history, and traditions.
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Diane Britton Dunham
Beloved Diane Britton Dunham’s (1955 - 2022) work has been recognized internationally as a genuine illustration of the history and traditions of African American southern culture for over two decades. Her paintings are well known because of their brilliant coloring, intricate human and landscape forms, and themes that represent life in South Carolina’s Low country region and the bayous of Louisiana. A self-taught mixed media artist and former instructor, Dunham has received honors and awards for her work. Diane’s artwork has been featured in many local and national publications, and can be found in private collections around the world.
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Mary Inabinett-Mack
born the third child of eight on a tobacco farm in Colleton County, South Carolina. Mary is a local icon in the world of art collecting. Over the last couple of years, Mary has transformed images of the St. Helena Sound into a series of paintings called "Women and Water." Her career in the health-care industry has spanned 50 years as a registered nurse in New York and later the Deputy Executive Director of the Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services.
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James Denmark
Born in Winter Haven, Florida, on March 23, 1936 into a family of artists. He was exposed to color and form at an early age by his grandmother – a wire sculptor and quilt artist, by his grandfather – a bricklayer noted for his unique custom design molds – and his mother – gifted with an intuitive feeling for design and a fastidiousness for detail which she expressed in all aspects of her life. This rich beginning is the root of Denmark’s creative expression.
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Victoria Smalls
Victoria Smalls is a public historian and educator, arts advocate and cultural preservationist, who believes in the value of building sustainable communities through the arts. She is a Maven with the Art of Community-Rural SC, and the Executive Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
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