Adrian Burrell (b. 1990, Oakland, CA) is third-generation Oakland-based artist and storyteller, who utilizes photography, film, and site-specific installations to delve into the intricate intersections of race, class, gender, and intergenerational dynamics. His artistic lens converges on the exploration of kinship, diasporic narratives, and the nuanced relationship between place and belonging. Burrell hopes to be a model for other Black Americans of similar backgrounds to reimagine their narratives by drawing on the nature of memory and contending documentation of multigenerational histories.

'The Saints Step in Kongo Time' artfully spotlights how Black bodies have been used to perfect colonial systems of extraction in the past and present as these systems continue to be exported and replicated around the world. In preparation for Burrell's first museum exhibition on the east coast, the artist worked with The Delaware Contemporary to make connections between his lineage, Delaware’s own history of sugar production, and systems of global extraction and exchange that still center around sugar. Within cycles of catastrophe, Burrell's film creates space for collective storytelling as a means for survival and care.