Sneaker Wave is a metal sculpture made through an extensive process of scrap salvaging. The form takes the shape of a sneaker, with a world of creatures, fish, and symbolic figures moving beneath and through it.
Sneaker Wave imagines goddess Yemenja beneath the sea, connected by an unbroken line to a vessel carrying her people across the water. Surrounded by an abundant underwater world, she becomes a spiritual presence across oceans and continents—a meditation on passage, ancestral connection, and the invisible ties that remain across great distances.
The piece reflects on the endurance of Yoruba spirituality and African ancestral traditions across the forced crossings of the North Atlantic slave trade. For Afatasi, these customs, spiritual practices, and ancestral connections are not erased by distance. They continue to travel, transform, and be passed down.
Through salvaged metal, ocean imagery, and mythic figures, Sneaker Wave speaks to survival, inheritance, movement, and the persistence of cultural memory.