The Oleander Symbol Codex | Suryah Studio
- Brian Suryah
- Jul 18
- 3 min read
July 17th 2025, I had the opportunity to teach a workshop about making wheat-based paint with earth-based pigments through a series titled: Oleander School for Negroe Publishers, organized by my dear friend MacKenzie River and the Red Emma's Freedom School. The series features a cohort of Black writers, artists, and organizers engaging in a collective practice of zine-making in person at Red Emma's Baltimore Free School. The series comprises 10 weeks of workshops and open studio sessions focused on radical alternative means of publishing. Participants are guided through a process of publishing and distributing a zine by a team of teaching peer mentors, from concept to distribution.
"Negro publishers" includes those within the African diaspora who are of queer, womanish, immigrant, disabled, and other marginalized experiences. Through the lens of zine-making, we examine Negro publishing traditions as independent, radical, local, and relational. We seek Negro publishers with interest in print and digital media, visual, written, and spoken languages, sustainable and alternative processes, and Afro-diasporic knowledge production." - MacKenzie River.
My offering to this effort was a workshop teaching the basics of making wheat paste paint with earth pigments. For this workshop, we worked with a base wheat paste mixture that I made using organic wheat flour and water infused with hematoxylin, a water-soluble chemical compound derived from the heartwood of the logwood tree (Haematoxylon campechianum), a small redwood tree indigenous to a handful of locations in South America. To that thick, maroon-colored paste, we added Alkanet, Eastern Brazilwood, and Japanese Indigo to layer in deeper color and transform what would have just been an opaque paste into a paint with a vibrant color profile.
In thinking about the ethos of the program we were running and my newly re-ignited interest in alternative strategies to mass communication in community movements, I used this opportunity to dream up a symbol codex using Adinkra symbols as a potential guide to a new way of communication amongst radical liberation-minded communities that I'm calling the Oleander Symbol Codex. With this symbol codex, the mission is to reclaim this ancestral symbology as a form of nonverbal, decentralized, and secure communication rooted in cultural sovereignty. This system resists surveillance, uplifts black consciousness, and connects our movements to African ways of knowing and transmitting information.
Adinkra symbols originated within the Gyaman kingdom, a Bono subgroup, in the early 19th century. King Nana Kwadwo Agyemang Adinkra is credited with either creating or popularizing these symbols, which were then named after him. The symbols were initially used on various items, such as pottery, stools, and textiles, particularly by the Gyaman people. The Asante (Ashanti) people later adopted the Adinkra symbols, incorporating them into their own culture and traditions, particularly on textile furnishings and clothing, as well as on ritualistic and ceremonial occasions. Since the broad adoption by both the Gyaman and Asante, the use of Adinkra symbols would eventually spread culturally throughout many other Akan groups.
Through the Oleander Symbol Codex, the studio recognizes adinkra symbols as visual proverbs and philosophical messages that, through this adaptive use rooted in cosmology, ethics, social governance, and community values, can:
Transmit knowledge non-verbally.
Allow layered meanings and poetic ambiguity.
Create lasting intergenerational connections.
Offer a visual language less legible to oppressors.
In my workshop, Earth to Ink, the cohort used their wheat paste paint and a six-symbol version of the Oleander Symbol Codex, below, with corresponding emojis to communicate a statement, story, or direction. Applying the paint to various materials, such as cardstock, adhesive-backed labels, and cardboard panels.
6-Symbol Oleander Symbol Codex:
Symbol: 🏚️ EBAN – "Fence"
Meaning: Safety, security, protection, and family.
OSC Meaning: Safe space, mutual aid, trust
Symbol: 🔥 FAWOHODIE – "Independence / Emancipation"
Meaning: Freedom, emancipation, liberation.
OSC Meaning: Freedom, resistance, direct action
Symbol: 🐏 DWENNIMMEN – "Ram's Horns"
Meaning: Strength and humility combined.
OSC Meaning: Humble leadership, restorative practice
Symbol: 🌀 ESE NE TEKREMA – "Teeth and Tongue"
Meaning: Interdependence, friendship, disagreement with unity.
OSC Meaning: Unity despite conflict, coalition building
Symbol: 🕊️ SANKOFA – "Return and get it"
Meaning: Learn from the past to build the future.
OSC Meaning: Ancestral wisdom, political education
Symbol: 🐊+🐊 FUNTUNFUNEFU-ƆDENKYEMFUNEFU – "Siamese Crocodiles"
Meaning: Unity in diversity, collective survival.
OSC Meaning: Unity in struggle, anti-factionalism
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