Tega Akpokona's atmospheric oil paintings examine the human experience as forged by cultural identity. In his work, Akpokona centers the black figure, exploring light and how it interacts with human existence while drawing on Dutch Baroque painting techniques in his use of subtle color contrasts. Akpokona holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine and Applied Arts from the University of Benin. More...
Osi Audu is an artist and curator whose practice over the last three decades has elevated abstract art through his geometric "self-portraits" that interrogate the duality of form/void and the tangible/intangible as they relate to the self and self-consciousness. He received fine arts degrees from the University of Ife and the University of Georgia. More...
British-Ghanaian artist Adelaide Damoah works at the intersection of painting and performance within the context of colonialism, identity, sexuality and spirituality. Her current practice involves using her body as a "living paintbrush" to paint or print onto various surfaces, often combining these body prints with found images, text and gold to explore her personal family history and Britain's colonial past with Ghana. More...
Kevin Demery's work transverses painting and sculpture to explore the interplay between U.S. history and signifiers of power, inviting us to move between the aesthetic of his work and motifs of historical violence, surveillance and childhood trauma. He received his BFA from the California College of the Arts and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More...
Mbali Dhlamini is a multidisciplinary artist and visual researcher whose work explores the decolonisation of contemporary African identity-making through visual, tactile and discursive investigations into indigenous cultural practices. She trained at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg and received her B.Tech. from the University of Johannesburg and her MFA from the University of the Witwatersrand. More...
Ana Paula dos Santos is a self-taught photographer whose practice is shaped by her coming of age in Brazil as well as her study of human geography and "decolonial studies," which gave her a language to put the experiences from her childhood and youth into words and to grasp and understand these experiences within the broader context of colonialism. More...
Lloyd Kofi Foster is a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with photography as well as sculpture, installation, video and mixed media. Foster captures daily life and the interactions of the people and places he encounters. He is an adjunct professor and graduate student at New York University, pursuing a MFA in Studio Art. More...
Kitso Lynn Lelliott is an artist, scholar and filmmaker. Her research and studio practice excavates and/or interrupts historical instances of elision, renegotiating and enunciating omitted knowledges, histories or narratives. Oscillating between what is ‘real’ and revealing erasure, she often embodies or motions at instances of retrieval, at times lending her own body in the retelling or re-articulation of said instances. More...
Sekai Machache is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self. She is interested in the relationship between spirituality, imagination and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing, working with a wide range of media including photography. More...
Thero Makepe's work is informed by past and present narratives related to his upbringing and lived experiences in Botswana and South Africa. Wavering between photographing handmade dioramas, existing landscapes and portraiture, his body of work contains images that evoke anxiety, tragedy and fatality, whereas others reflect calmness, light and eternal rest. More...
Leo Makgekgenene's work is a determined effort to bypass cultural censorship and to counteract the restrictions of traditionalism, producing an elusive critique of state machinery and sociological constructions. Their work engages with the evolution of Botswana's women's movements while exploring alternative points of access to critical and radical pedagogies - specifically for black women. More...
Kim Karabo Makin's work is informed by a lived sense of displacement and multiculturalism – with particular attention to the role that context plays in identity formation. Makin's practice at present compounds aspects of her background in Sculpture with her experience in Radio and thus combines Sculpture, Sound and Installation, with a research archival base and unique spatial awareness. More...
Zana ‘Ndebele Superhero’ Masombuka highlights the evolutionary process of culture, particularly the Ndebele culture, and how it emulates human behavioral patterns as well the various environments that influence its formulation. Her work explores the convergence of the human experience with the modern world and how that impacts culture and tradition. More...
Wangari Mathenge's paintings offer snap-shots in time, capturing figures at rest, withdrawn, or preoccupied with domestic routines. Her compositions merge figuration with still life, objects acting as cultural cues and time markers, which help place the events depicted and reflect the loss and re-fabrication occurring in instances of dislocation and displacement. More...
Tuli Mekondjo is a self-taught visual artist who employs mixed media and draws on colonial and war-time photographic archives and on histories of change, loss and submission – with a particular focus on women. In addition to embroidered canvas and paper works, Mekondjo’s practice involves live performance in which the artist becomes a channel between past and present. More...
Mario Moore uses oil painting, silver-point drawing and non-traditional materials like copper to explore the relationship between art, history, art history and the contemporary experience of Black men's lives in the United States, grappling with depictions of the Black male that are rare in art, including experiences of rest and leisure, love and familial relationships. More...
Tagne William Njepe's paintings deal with the loss of childhood, denouncing child labor and championing the right to education. Forced to leave school early himself, Njepe is exorcising experiences of forced labor in his paintings which juxtapose children doing odd jobs with a background filled with cartoon characters and cheerful peers. More...
Investigating identity, urban environments and cultural iconography, Tim Okamura combines a "realist" approach to the figure with collage, spray paint and mixed media, juxtaposing the rawness and urgency of street art with academic ideals to create a visual language that acknowledges traditional portraiture, while infusing it with contemporary motifs. More...
Nnenna Okore is an internationally acclaimed artist who is known for her intricate mixed media sculptures. More recently, she also started creating vibrant textured paintings. She has received art degrees from the University of Nigeria in Nsukka and the University of Iowa and is currently Chair of the Art Department at North Park University in Chicago. More...
Owanto is a multi-cultural Gabonese artist and human rights activist whose multidisciplinary practice emerges from a 30-year career engaging with consciousness through the notion of personal and collective memory and exploring cross-cultural and transhistorical dialogues to interrogate the meaning of existence and of her personal and shared history. More...
For Thebe Phetogo, the sphere of painting and its vast history and conventions act as a stand-in for history and the world at-large. He uses painting to locate and build a space for himself within the gaps – both known and perceived – of this history as a subject and participant of the contemporary moment, specifically from the lens of his positionality as a Motswana working within and outside of home. More...
Tajh Rust's environmental portrait paintings are framed in both interior and outdoor spaces and investigate the relationships between black identity and space as well as the concept of representation. Rust graduated from The Cooper Union in 2011 with a BFA in Painting and Film and is a 2019 MFA graduate from Yale University School of Art. More...
Anike Joyce Sadiq explores the relationships between the legacy of relational aesthetics and post-colonial theory through video, photography and performance. Sadiq's intermedial spaces create realities and stagings at the same time and thus give rise to a new questioning of concepts of authorship, authenticity, communication and identity. More...
Ghizlane Sahli creates cellular-form ink drawings and large enchanting silk-thread sculptures made from used bottle tops. Her sculptures, which she refers to as "the Alveoles", are deeply inspired by her interest in architecture, embroidery and environmental sustainability. Sahli received degrees in architecture from Paris-Tolbiac and Paris-Belleville. More...
Lerato Shadi's practice challenges common assumptions to critique Western notions of history and make visible that which is invisible or overlooked. Working across video, performance and installation, and often employing repetitive processes, Shadi argues the importance of centering the marginalised body as a main figure of narrative experience. More...
Eun-Joo Shin is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her distinctive style of painting in which she achieves a light watercolor effect while painting with oil on canvas. Shin received degrees in Korean Painting from the Chu-Gye University of Arts and the Se-Jong University in Seoul and pursued further graduate studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. More...
Sade Shoalane is a spiritually inclined artist who uses trans-disciplinary approaches to navigate the spectrum of decolonising and re-indigenousing the personal and political self. With mediums and techniques oscillating between found object making, hand sewing, new media, performance, and sound, their work explores and suggests alternative aesthetics. More...
Nigatu Tsehay's work portrays lived experience through depictions of distorted bodies in collage and embedded within compositions combining body parts and still life. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts where he taught as an Assistant Lecturer before pursuing his graduate studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. More...
Raelis Vasquez is a visual artist who draws on historical, political and personal narratives through depictions of daily life and whose painterly compositions evoke the complexities of Afro-Latinx experiences. He earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and he is a 2021 MFA candidate at Columbia University. More...
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