Ground Truths
Mimi Ọnụọha
Artwork Description:
In 2018, the remains of 95 people were discovered in a mass grave in Sugar Land, Texas. All were casualties of convict leasing, a 19th and 20th century system in which mainly Black Americans were often charged with false or trumped up crimes so their labor could be sold to the highest bidder. Artist Mimi Ọnụọha grew up minutes away and, like most in her hometown, had no idea the grave existed. One question haunted her: how did no one know? In Ground Truths, Ọnụọha builds a machine-learning model capable of predicting where other such graves lie hidden across Texas. But the deeper she goes—through archives, phone calls, missing records—the more the project destabilizes. What emerges is a portrait of human and structural forgetting: absence as infrastructure, silence as inheritance, data shaped by the gaps that inform it. This docufiction film asks what happens when the tools we trust to reveal truth are built from the very systems that produce erasure. Ultimately, it is a film about what constitutes our ground: the foundations of knowledge we inherit, what they conceal, and what remains buried beneath them.
Project Collaborators:
Film credits below: Directed by Mimi Ọnụọha Written and Narrated by Mimi Ọnụọha Produced by Nicholas Castle Director of Photography: Nicholas Castle Gaffer: Chase Shamlian Original Score: Mathien Post-Production: verytaste VFX: Nick Gardner Re-recording Mixer: Eric Harding Sound Design: Mathien & Eric Harding Colorist: Daniel Orentlicher Set Design: Dae Narciso González Featuring Patrick Ball Statistical Consultant and Collaborator: Patrick Ball Research Assistants: MiKayla Green, Jack Sullivan, Tamilore Ajeigbe Research Aides: Ededi Adjagbodjou, Marie Ayiah, Niara Botchwey Samantha Gamble, Gabriella Gordon, Maisam Goreish Ian Hayes, Celine Ibrahim, Sterling Lee Julia London, Benazir Neree, Christiana Ofosu Sandra Ojeaburu, Chiọma Ọnụọha, Brianna Turner Nwaọbiala Archival material courtesy of Periscope Film Certain materials used under Fair Use for purposes of commentary and criticism.
