Abstract
This paper explores a new conceptual art form: the Afro-Creole titanium coin, an object that evokes layered histories — West African diasporic aesthetics, Classical Creole idealism, and Pharaonic Egyptian symbology — as an artistic artifact embodying ancestral recurrence and speculative futurity. Anchoring this vision is the multidimensional artist Georgio Sabino III (GS3), whose interdisciplinary practice connects ancient cosmologies to Afro-punk sensibilities, reaffirming lineage while charting new cultural imaginaries.
1. Introduction: Reimagining Coinage as Living Archive
Coins have historically functioned as mobile archives — carrying the visage of rulers, the stabilizing imagery of states, and symbolic messages that encode power. Classical Afro-Creole coinage, for example, was a medium of philosophy, politics, divine myth, and civic pride. When combined with Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, the coin becomes a palimpsest of cultural chronologies. In GS3’s conceptual design, titanium — a material associated with industrial futurism and endurance — replaces ancient silver, binding durability with cultural resonance.
This coin is more than an object: it is a syncretic artifact that speaks to diasporic memory, ancestral reverence, resistance aesthetics, and the Afro-punk ethos — an artistic movement that embraces Afrocentric futurity fused with countercultural expression.
2. Afro-Creole Identity with Greek Influences: Historical Resonances and Diasporic Aesthetics
The notion of Afro-Creole identity has emerged not from geographic co-location but through cultural translation across histories. During antiquity, Egypt (Kemet) stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean, African, and Near Eastern worlds. Greek travelers, scholars, and later conquerors encountered Egyptian cosmologies, triggering mutual influence in art, religion, and philosophy.
For the African American diasporic subject, connecting to these trans-Mediterranean architectures of thought means reclaiming intellectual genealogies often elided in Western curricula — from the contributions of Egyptian mathematics and cosmology to the presence of scholars of African descent in Hellenistic schools.
GS3’s coin design visualizes this linkage: the embossed profile, inspired by a living contemporary’s visage (though not a literal portrait), carries the weight of ancestral specificity — a phenomenology of Black subjectivity that resists flattening.
3. Blue Curled Strand: Symbolism of Ancestral and Future Currents
The striking blue curled hair strand — modern, surreal, and metaphoric — functions as an embodied signifier. Blue, across cultures, symbolizes both the infinite (sky, water) and the sacred. In this instance:
- Curls represent African hair textures historically stigmatized yet central to identity affirmation.
- Blue pigment evokes ancient Egyptian faience and lapis lazuli, materials associated with royalty and the divine.
- The coexistence of hair and metallic relief on the coin bridges era and expression, signifying continuity between ancestral material cultures and contemporary aesthetics.
Thus, this visual element is not decorative but a philosophical signpost to temporal continuity, a motif of lineage that flows but never breaks.
4. Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Afro-Creole & Greek Letterforms, and Polyvocal Inscription
Around the rim of these coins, an interplay of Afro-Creole – Greek letterforms and Egyptian hieroglyphic motifs signals a polyvocal inscription. Unlike classical coins that often employ standardized imperial text, this hybrid script is a poetic encoding of:
- Names and sounds that reflect diasporic phonologies
- Concepts such as “heritage,” “resistance,” “memory,” and “becoming”
- Mnemonic devices that demand the viewer participate in decoding the narrative
In anthropological terms, this script acts as an agogic threshold, inviting interpretation through multiple cultural grammars while affirming an inclusive archive.
5. Three Pyramids as Temporal Locus
In the variante coin with three pyramids, we find an architectural horizon that is both rooted and speculative. The pyramids symbolize:
- Domesticated ancestral past (Old Kingdom Egypt)
- Mnemonic stasis — a testament to enduring creativity
- Three temporal registers: past, present, and future
The pyramids here do not merely recall antiquity; they function as transhistorical portals, aligning the Afro-Creole and Afro-punk imaginary with cosmic continuity. GS3’s use of this imagery situates his work within a lineage of Black futurist speculation — where heritage is not static but evolves as resonant frequencies — echoing Octavia Butler’s insistence that “all that you touch you change, all that you change changes you.”
6. The Afro-Punk Inflection: Heritage as Futuristic Practice
Afro-punk, as a cultural movement, is liberatory and transgressive, channeling self-authorship through fashion, music, performance, and visual art. GS3’s lineage from this aesthetic is evident:
- Through fusion of classical and contemporary signifiers
- Through gender-affective visual language
- Through disturbance of normative historical narratives
- Through cinematic and expressive imagery grounded in diasporic embodiment
The potential of the coin as wearable art, collectible sculpture, and cultural manifesto positions it as emblematic of a broader Afro-punk future that reframes ancestry not as static reverence but dynamic resistance and reinvention.
7. GS3 Conclusion: Objects That Speak Across Time
In summation, the conceptual Afro-Creole titanium coins are not only artistic artifacts; they are vectors of memory, identity, and futurity — interweaving African American ancestral threads with Mediterranean and Egyptian forms. These objects function as philosophical provocations, inviting viewers and collectors to reconsider how material art carries lineage, transforms narratives, and inspires renewed imagination. “This came from a dream to reality” – GS3 says.
At the heart of this is Georgio Sabino III, whose multifaceted practice — spanning photo-media, conceptual sculpture, writing, and community engagement — embodies a creative ethos that knows no temporal boundaries. His work naturalizes heritage as an active force for futurity, reminding us that the past is not a museum but a living archive, and that creative practice is one of the strongest inheritable currencies of culture.
