What is Come By Here?
Come By Here is the love child of two creators: Sakile Ink and Trancestral Seeds. We are a couple of Black Trans organizers and artists based in Baltimore. Our collaborative visual art combines our respective skills, usually to create multimedia drawings and textured collages. More often, We can be found creating afro-grungey-pop items to sell like beaded jewelry, handmade bags, and clothing upcycled with embroidery, bleach, and dyes. Everything we sell is to help us get closer to our goal of travel farming, land stewardship, and communal living! So far, we have organized clothing swaps, a day retreat, gallery and open mic in Baltimore City...but our dreams for organizing and community building are far bigger than what we have achieved. We are trying to survive while keeping our dreams at the forefront of our minds. One day when we find more of our community, surviving, creating and organizing will be a thousand times easier and more fruitful for us. We're hoping this day comes sooner than later, because we have SO MUCH TO DO.
What does Come By Here mean?
"Come By Here" is a translation of a Gullah Geechee word, Kumbaya". The Gullah Geechee are an African ethnic group of the coastal southeastern United States. Gullah Geechee People are descendants of Africans who were enslaved on the rice, indigo, and cotton Plantations of the lower Atlantic coast. Like so many Black and Trans cultural products do, "Kumbaya" has lost its meaning in the hands and mouths of those unlike us. It has been distorted into a mocking term of false harmony between people. Yet, in reality, this term is a spiritual call for divine intervention against oppressive forces, such as those that trafficked our People to this land in the first Place.
So we are using "Come By Here" as an invitation for Black Trans People to experience collective freedom together: