MARTA Artbound presents Afronauts by ELEY
MARTA Artbound presents Afronauts by ELEY
Opening - Saturday, May 30 | 12PM–3PM
Oakland MARTA Station | Atlanta, GA
1400 Lee St SW, Atlanta, GA 30310
(In the Lee St + Murphy St Tunnels)
MARTA Artbound presents Afronauts, a public installation by Afronaut, photographer, and visual artist ELEY exploring movement, identity, and belonging within spaces of transition. Installed within the Oakland MARTA station—a site of constant passage—the work reframes transit as more than commute, becoming a reflection on migration, presence, and the search for connection.
This presentation introduces four of the eight stories that will appear in Afronauts, an upcoming book currently in progress. Through stylized portraiture, documentary photography, landscapes, and an accompanying soundscape, the installation follows individuals navigating unfamiliar environments while asking universal questions:
Where can I expand?
Where am I safe?
Where am I valued?
Each story unfolds through a layered visual and sensory sequence. The work begins with stylized portraiture in which each explorer is introduced through custom costuming and diasporic visual language that shape their symbolic “space suit.” Developed from original photographic portraits and transformed into illustrated works, these illustrations function as chapter openings, establishing the emotional and psychological tone of each individual journey.
These portraits lead into documentary photography, capturing the lived realities of exploration, cultural integration, displacement, and belonging. Fragments of cryptic text and field-note language appear throughout the installation, immersing viewers deeper into the psychological terrain of movement and discovery.
The experience is further connected through landscapes of transition that act as visual bridges between the Afronauts, tracing the emotional distance between departure, arrival, and grounding.
Afronauts is designed as a multi-sensory installation. Viewers may scan a QR code to access a curated soundscape blending music of cultural origin with atmospheric and ethereal tones inspired by space, memory, and transition, creating an immersive environment that moves alongside the work itself. Headphones are encouraged.
Rooted in ELEY’s own journey of leaving the American South in search of expanded perspective and independence, Afronauts reflects on the quiet courage required to create home in motion. Each figure stands as both individual and mirror—revealing how belonging is formed not through permission, but through continued arrival.
ELEY is an Afronaut, photographer, and visual artist whose work explores identity, community, and the inner lives of Black and brown communities. Working across documentary and conceptual practices, her images exist between observation and construction—where lived experience and imagination converge. With close to two decades of professional practice and an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design, her work spans commercial and fine art contexts, engaging socio-political realities while expanding how those realities are seen and understood.
The event is free and open to the public.
Press Inquiries:
eley@eleyphoto.com