Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) was an American painter and illustrator, active during the Harlem Renaissance. He might be most known for his Aspects of Negro Life mural series that traces Black people from an African past to a modern United States. He created illustrations for in Opportunity and The Crisis, two publications and was eventually invited to an art critic at The Crisis. Douglas was also a teacher, who influenced the development of countless students at Fisk University. In 1940, he accepted a full position in the art department and worked his way up to become chairman of the art department. He retired in 1966. Douglas received his BA in Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Abdoulaye Konaté (1953- ) is an Malian textile and sculptural artist. His woven tapestries have reference socio-political and environmental concerns. Konaté references West African practices of using textiles as a means of commemoration and communication.  Konaté studied painting at the Institut National des Arts de Bamako and then at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba.

Abdoulaye Ndoye (1951- ) is a Sengalese artist working across painting, printmaking, and ceramics. He is interested in invented script that resembles African writing systems and Arabic calligraphy. The writings possess meaning known solely by Ndoye. The process of creating is of particular importance to him.  Ndoye attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1976 to 1980. 

Abe Odedina (1960- ) is a Nigerian painter. He works on board rather than canvas to invoke mural traditions. For Odedina, the material is deeply tied to the resulting work. Odedina's inspiration draws heavily from figurative and oral traditions of African art and ancient Greek and Yoruba mythologies. His bold colors create surreal interior scenes.

Abner Dubic (1944- ) is a Haitian painter. Many of his paintings depict daily life in Haiti. These scenes range from country life, farm work, and festivities.

Abraham Oghobase (1979- ) is a Nigerian artist working with photography. He explores history, culture, and environmentalism through his practice. Oghobase pushes photography to its limits, confronting and deconstructing traditional modes of image making.  Oghobase received his MFA in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto. 

Adama Adollah is a British photographer and filmmaker. She regularly contributes to various online platforms. Adollah creates striking portraits of her subjects, granting them dignity and grace through her eye.  Adollah received her BA in Commercial Photography from Arts University Bournemouth in 2015.

Adam Pendleton (born January 5, 1984, in Richmond, Virginia) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, screenprinting, photography, video, film, installation, sculpture, performance, text, and publishing. Known for an approach that continually moves between abstraction and language, Pendleton constructs densely layered works from gestural marks, fragmented words, geometric forms, photographs, archival imagery, and appropriated cultural material. His paintings often begin as works on paper incorporating paint, spray paint, ink, watercolor, stencils, drips, and text; these compositions are then photographed, enlarged, layered, and transferred through screenprinting, intentionally collapsing distinctions among painting, drawing, and photography.  Central to Pendleton’s practice is Black Dada, a term and conceptual framework he began developing in 2008 to investigate relationships among Blackness, abstraction, language, political history, and the historical avant-garde. Rather than treating Black identity or history as fixed subjects that can be straightforwardly represented, Black Dada allows fragments of language, imagery, gesture, and historical documents to encounter one another without settling into a single meaning. His work draws from sources spanning Amiri Baraka, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Black Lives Matter, Dada, conceptual art, concrete poetry, experimental film, Minimalism, and histories of civil-rights organizing.  Pendleton’s interest in archives and political history extends beyond painting. His films and video portraits have focused on artists, writers, choreographers, and thinkers including Lorraine O’Grady, Yvonne Rainer, Ishmael Houston-Jones, and Jack Halberstam. For projects including Who Is Queen? and Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?), Pendleton has drawn from archival documentation of the Black Panther Party, Resurrection City, the Poor People’s Campaign, and other sites of collective political action, restructuring documentary material through montage, repetition, abstraction, sound, and fragmentation.  Pendleton studied at the Artspace Independent Study Program in Pietrasanta, Italy, from 2000 to 2002 before moving to New York at eighteen. He was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2008–09 and has since presented major projects at the Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whitney Museum of American Art, mumok in Vienna, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and other institutions. In 2024, he received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His current major museum presentations include Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen at the Hirshhorn, on view through January 2027; Can I Be? at the Langen Foundation in Germany; and Some Wild Kind of Language, opening at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in October 2026. Pendleton lives and works between Brooklyn and Germantown, New York.

Ademola Olugebefola (né Bedwick Lyola Thomas; b. October 2, 1941, Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands) is an American multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator, and cultural activist whose practice spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, mural-making, theatre set design, and graphic media. He was a founding member of the Black Arts Movement’s influential Weusi Artist Collective in Harlem during the 1960s, and his work draws on pan-African aesthetics, Afro-futurist vision, and community-based art practice. 

Adiskidan Ambaye (1977- ) is an Ethiopian sculptor and painter. She has a background in furniture design. This grounding informs her work as a sculptor. To Ambaye, sculpting and drawing are interrelated. Her sculptures are usually preceded by gestural sketches, influencing the basis for her three-dimensional compositions. Amabaye received her degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002. 

Adler Guerrier (born 1975, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a Haitian-born artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores place, identity, urban space, politics, and the poetics of everyday geography. Working across photography, drawing, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, Guerrier examines the social and psychological dimensions of landscape through assemblage, walking, recurring forms, and the recomposition of text and image.  Guerrier received a BFA from the University of Florida/New World School of the Arts in 2000. His work often engages diaspora, migration, Black life, architecture, and the built environment, using photographs, prints, sculptural interventions, and collaged works on paper to consider how race, class, and culture are embedded in cities and in the ways people move through them. Miami is a central site in his practice, functioning both as a lived geography and as a broader framework for thinking about belonging, urban change, and memory.  His work has been exhibited at Pérez Art Museum Miami, the California African American Museum, the Whitney Biennial, Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, and David Castillo Gallery, among other venues. His work is held in collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami, ICA Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Walker Art Center. Adler Guerrier lives and works in Miami, Florida.

a’driane nieves (1982- ) is an American multidisplinary artist working across painting, works on paper, and sonic pieces. She began painting as a therapeutic outlet. Abstract expressionist painting gave her the visual language to navigate the impacts of childhood abuse. Her work touches on Black bodies, experiences, traumas & triumphs, and healing.  nieves received her Associate of Arts from Camden County College in 2011. 

Adrian Octavius Walker (1985- ) is an American photographer and mixed media artist. His work seeks to expand the canon surrounding the nuances of Black life through tenderness and grit. Walker’s passion lies in using his practice to platform critical discourse around the imagination in black nostalgia. Adrian’s approach to still photography and sculpture is rooted in his commitment to archiving Black stories for the future. 

Adrian Piper (born 1948, New York, NY) is a pioneering conceptual artist and philosopher whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary art, critical theory, and discourses on race, identity, and the politics of representation. Beginning her career in the late 1960s, Piper emerged as one of the first women—and the first African American woman—associated with the early Conceptual Art movement.  Her practice spans performance, video, installation, drawing, painting, sound, and text-based works that confront viewers with their own assumptions about race, gender, perception, and power. Piper’s works such as the Mythic Being series, the Catalysis performances, and the Everything installations investigate systems of categorization and the social construction of identity.  A rigorous philosopher, Piper holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University and has published influential writings on Kant, metaethics, and aesthetics. In 2018, The Museum of Modern Art organized Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016, the largest exhibition ever devoted to a living artist in the museum’s history. Piper currently lives and works in Berlin, where she founded the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA).

Aïda Muluneh (1974- ) is an Ethiopian photographer. Her conceptual compositions reflect her interests in climate justice and feminist perspectives. Her photographs are colorful and bold and incorporate traditional Ethiopian dress and face markings. Primary colors (red, blue, yellow) are often seen in her photographs and reference Ethiopian wall paintings. Muluneh is the founder of Addis Foto Fest (AFF), the first international photography festival in East Africa. She strives to cultivate opportunities for emerging African photographers. 

Aimé Mpane (born 1968, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a Congolese artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores colonialism, identity, place, memory, and the enduring relationship between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Belgium. Working across sculpture, installation, painting, mosaic-like wall hangings, and carved wood portraiture, Mpane examines postcolonial history and contemporary Congolese life through rough-hewn surfaces, layered construction, and the repeated use of wood as a materially and symbolically charged medium.  Mpane studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, where he trained in sculpture. His work often engages colonial history, race, public memory, and Congolese self-representation, using wood carving, painted surfaces, portraiture, and a traditional adze to consider how identity is formed across personal experience and larger historical structures. Many of his sculptures and installations address the aftermath of Belgian colonialism, while his portraits of people encountered in Kinshasa foreground the social and emotional texture of contemporary urban life.  His work has been exhibited at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Liverpool Biennial, the University of Wyoming Art Museum, Haines Gallery, and the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. He received the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Prize from The Phillips Collection, and his work is held in collections including The Phillips Collection and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Aimé Mpane lives and works between Brussels and Kinshasa.

Aina Onabolu (b. September 13, 1882, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria – d. 1963, Lagos) was a pioneering Nigerian painter and educator, known as one of the founders of modern Nigerian art. Self-taught from a young age, he mastered European academic realism and became the first to introduce formal art training and realistic portraiture into Nigerian schools. His work helped shift perceptions of African artistic capacity during the colonial era and had lasting influence on Nigerian art education and modernism. 

Ain Bailey (born 1963, in London) is a British composer, sound artist, DJ, and multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores sonic autobiography, memory, grief, identity, architecture, and feminist politics. Working across sound art, installation, moving image, live performance, and DJ practice, Bailey examines silence, absence, place, and social relation through field recordings, found sound, multichannel composition, and collaborative projects.  Bailey earned an MMus in Studio Composition from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work often engages architectural acoustics, live performance, and the formation of identity, using sound workshops, moving-image collaborations, and electroacoustic composition to consider grief, home, memory, and resistance. Recent institutional writing also frames her ongoing The Jamaica Project as a trilogy rooted in her biography and relationship to Jamaica.  Her work has been exhibited and performed at Camden Art Centre, Cubitt, Eastside Projects, Transmission Gallery, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, and The Kitchen, New York. She was commissioned by Art Basel Miami Beach in 2016 and was the Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College in 2022–2023. Ain Bailey lives and works in London. 

Aisha Tandiwe Bell is an American artist interested in the idea of "traps", fragmentation, and hyphenated identities through sculpture performance, video, sound, drawing, and installation. The process of mythmaking and ritual in her work call into question the categories of race, class, and sex and the societal ideas around them. Bell received her MS in Art and Design Education with a focus in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1999 and an MFA in Ceramics from Hunter College, New York, NY in 2008. She received her BFA in Painting and Art Education from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1998. 

Ajamu X (1963- ) is a British artist, curator, archivist, and activist. His photographic practice explores Black male and queer sensuality. Many of his subjects are LGBTQ folks who are out socially. X's work is a celebration of queer vibrancy and intimacy. 

Akinola Taoheed Olaitan (2000- ) is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist. Many of his works feature faces against floral backgrounds.  Olaitan is currently pursuing a degree in Art Education at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. 

Akinsanya Kambon (born 1946, Sacramento, California) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores Black history, African diasporic memory, spiritual traditions, resistance, and liberation. Working across ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, and bronze, Kambon examines historical struggle and resilience through narrative vessels, wall plaques, and figurative forms that merge political storytelling with symbolic and spiritual imagery.  Kambon earned both a B.A. and an M.A. from California State University, Fresno, in 1974 and 1976, respectively. His work often engages social history, mythology, revolution, and collective memory, using clay and other materials to visualize histories of violence, survival, and Black self-determination across Africa and the Americas. Born Mark Teemer, he served in Vietnam as a Marine infantryman and combat illustrator before becoming Lieutenant of Culture for the Sacramento chapter of the Black Panther Party; those experiences remain central to the political and historical force of his practice.  His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Jack Shainman Gallery, Crocker Art Museum, Marc Selwyn Fine Art, and CARA in New York. He received the 2023 Mohn Award following the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A.: Acts of Living exhibition. Kambon lives and works in Long Beach, California.

Alanna Fields (1990- ) is an American mixed media artist preserving and examining queer history archival research. Her work includes text, painting, and photography to highlight the ways that queer individuals and histories have been hidden. Fields received her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. She holds a BA in Literature from Trinity Washington University. 

Alassane Koné (1995- ) is a Malian sculptor. Thread is a central part of his practice, as it is easier to manipulate than metal. Pulling from other disciplines, such as painting and drawing, Koné creates figurative threaded portraits.

Alexandra Antoine is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural apprentice whose multidisciplinary practice explores Haitian heritage, portraiture, food, farming, physical labor, and traditional artistic practices across the African diaspora. Working across collage, portraiture, mural-making, social practice, food-based work, and education, Antoine examines memory, lineage, healing, and community through storytelling, visual design, and forms of making rooted in both domestic and collective life.  Antoine earned an Associate’s degree in Fine Arts from Valencia Community College in 2010 and a BFA with an emphasis in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Her work often engages family archive, Haitian culture, apprenticeship, portraiture, and the labor of cultivation, using collage, murals, photography, food, and community-based practice to consider identity, cultural transmission, and the everyday processes through which knowledge is shared across generations. Sources also note her time spent in Léogâne, Haiti, the birthplace of her parents, as an important foundation for her visual language.  Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at boundary, Chicago Art Department, and Rootwork Gallery in Chicago, and she has participated in projects with The Heirloom Collards Project, Envisioning Justice, and artist residency and teaching initiatives in the Chicago area. In 2022, she was named Artist in Residence at Lake Forest College. Alexandra Antoine lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 

Alexandre Arrechea (1970- ) is a Cuban multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans large-scale installations, sculptures, watercolor drawings, and videos. He is one of the founding members of the Cuban collective, Los Carpinteros, active between 1991 and 2003. The group toyed with the idea of dichotomies and often reimagined everyday objects into an imperfect, new form.  As a solo artist, he focuses on systems of power and surveillance. The connections between architecture, history, memory, and the Black body are all of interest to him. His public sculpture invites audience interaction.  Arrechea received a BFA from Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana in 1994. 

Alfred Amadu Conteh (1975- ) is an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and mixed-media artist. His works explore the personal identity from multiple perspectives. He treats the surface of his work with materials such as battery acid, rust, and soil to reflect the lives of his sitters, many of whom do not have access to the "American dream". He critiques the material conditions of Black Americans who have been systematically neglected. He received his BFA from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. He received his MFA from Georgia Southern University. 

Alick Phiri (b. 1948, Zambia) is a pioneering Zambian photographer whose work offers rare, intimate views of everyday life, identity, and community in Lusaka from the 1960s through the 1990s. Trained at Photo Art Studios in Lusaka under mentor Prabhubhai Patel, Phiri was among the few black photographers active during a period when photographic access was heavily restricted in Zambia. He is celebrated for capturing ordinary moments—portraits, street scenes, family gatherings—with dignity, sincerity, and historical weight. His archive is now being rediscovered and appreciated in Zambia and internationally, helping to reshape how visual memory and national identity are understood. 

Alioune Diagne (1985- ) is a Senegalese painter working in what he calls, a “figuro-abstro” style. He is inspired by calligraphy and uses that as his starting place. When viewing his work closely, one sees signs and shapes. Only when taking a step back does the full picture come into focus. Diagne's painting show a glimpse of daily life in Senegal, with scenes of fishermen, women at markets, and migrants. He also highlights ongoing wealth and resource disparity. 

Allison Janae Hamilton (born 1984, Kentucky, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines the relationships between land, memory, labor, and Black Southern identity. Working across sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance, Hamilton draws from personal histories and the cultural landscapes of the American South to explore how Black bodies have shaped—and been shaped by—rural environments. Her practice engages folklore, spiritual traditions, and ecological histories, often invoking the presence of ancestors and unseen forces embedded in the land. Through immersive and materially rich works, Hamilton reclaims Southern spaces as sites of Black agency, resistance, and imagination.

Alma Thomas (1891-1978) was an American painter. Her colorful, abstract, mosaic-like paintings reference nature and art history. She was inspired by pointillism, the Washington Color School, and her mentor Loïs Mailou Jones to push herself. Her compositions reflect a deep belief in the power of color and its connection to beauty and goodness. Thomas had her first exhibition at Howard University at the age of 75.  In 1924 she became the first graduate of Howard University's art department.

Althea McNish (1924-2020) was a Trinidadian-British textile designer. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, she assisted with her mother's dressmaking business as a child. She was a member of the Trinidad Arts Society and had her first exhibition at the age of 16. Relocating to London with her family in the 1950s, she attended art schools and was encouraged by mentors to apply her skills to textiles. Her style is known for its vibrant, contrasting colors and tropical flora and fauna. She was one of the first Afro-Caribbean designers to reach international acclaim.  McNish took courses at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts, the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and the Royal College of Art. 

Althea Murphy-Price is an American printmaker and sculpture. She uses lithography, stenciling methods, photography and 3D printing. Her work considers the centrality of hair in fashioning identity.  Murphy-Price received a B.A. from Spelman College, an M.A. from Purdue University and an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.  

Alvaro Barrington (born Feb 1, 1983, Caracas, Venezuela) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, textile, installation, and performance, engaging histories of migration, diaspora, and cultural exchange. Raised between the Caribbean and New York and now based in London, Barrington’s practice reflects a transnational perspective shaped by movement, hybridity, and community. His work is characterized by a material-driven approach that incorporates burlap, textiles, acrylic, yarn, and found objects, often referencing domestic labor, craft traditions, and everyday life. Drawing inspiration from Caribbean culture, hip-hop, jazz, and global artistic lineages—from modernist painting to textile practices—Barrington creates works that merge abstraction and figuration while foregrounding process and collaboration. Barrington frequently explores the relationship between art and social space, treating exhibitions as sites of gathering, exchange, and performance. His works often reference historical figures, cultural icons, and personal networks, positioning art as a living, relational practice rather than a fixed object. Through bold color, layered materials, and tactile surfaces, his paintings and installations emphasize presence, memory, and the interconnectedness of global Black cultures. His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including major exhibitions and biennials, and he represented Grenada at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). Barrington lives and works in London.

Alvin Baltrop (born December 11, 1948, in the Bronx, New York City – died February 1, 2004) was an American photographer whose documentary practice explored queer social worlds, erotic freedom, urban abandonment, class, and the fragile forms of community that emerged along New York’s West Side piers in the 1970s and 1980s. Working primarily in black-and-white photography, Baltrop examined intimacy, vulnerability, sexuality, and survival through immersive observation, serial documentation, and a sustained proximity to the people and spaces he photographed.  Baltrop studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1973 to 1975. Before and during that period, he served in the Navy as a medic during the Vietnam War and continued photographing those around him. His work often engages queer history, social documentary, the archive, and urban landscape, using direct yet empathetic image-making to consider desire, marginality, bodily freedom, and the disappearance of spaces that once held underground gay life and artistic experimentation.  His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, Galerie Buchholz, and Modern Art, London, and it has gained major posthumous recognition for its record of pre-AIDS queer life on Manhattan’s waterfront. Baltrop encountered rejection from the art establishment during his lifetime, but his photographs are now understood as vital to the histories of photography, queer New York, and Black visual culture. Alvin Baltrop lived and worked in New York City. 

Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Puerto Rican artist working across installation, performance, video, sculpture, and works on paper. Flowers uses materials that have been associated as feminine or have oversaturated girl-like substances or colors. This allows her to assign a more positive association to materials that may be overlooked. Flowers is interested in fantasy, as a system of resistance and future-building emerges in her work. Embedded in the work is a sense of permeability that can not be categorized, a space with queer people freely and joyfully exist.   Flowers received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2014. 

Ambrose Rhapsody Murray (1996-) is a conceptual artist from Jacksonville, Florida, who employs the use of sewing, painting, and film to create statements about the Black feminine body, memory, and more. Their work draws inspiration from Black feminist writers and addresses concepts including healing, intimacy, and grief.

Ameh Egwuh (1996- ) is a painter who participated in the inaugural edition of Rele Arts Foundation’s Young Contemporaries Bootcamp in 2019 and was selected in 2020 as part of Rele Arts Foundation Young Contemporaries. Egwuh studied Fine and Applied Art at Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria.  

Amel Bashier (1981- ) is a Sudanese artist whose work includes drawings and paintings. Taking inspiration from themes such as peace, heritage, and feminine strength, she contextualizes the female figure in modern struggles for equality. Bashier's drawings utilize a precise and meticulous pointillistic method. Bashier received a Bachelor of Interior Design at the Sudan University of Science and Technology. 

Aminah Robinson (1940-2015) was a visual artist from Ohio. Working to create drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more, her work takes significant inspiration from African American history and cultural production. Known for her textile work and tapestries, Robinson created highly detailed works. 

Amna Elhassan (1988- ) is a Sudanese printmaker, painter, and installation artist. Elhassan's work focuses on the experiences of women. Deeply affected by her country's political and social unrest, her paintings and installations ensure women's challenges and triumphs are not lost. The vibrant and fantastical color palette reflects her love for painting and experimentation with techniques.   Elhassan received her Bachelor of Science from Khartoum University, Khartoum in 2010 and her Master di II Livello in Architecture per la Salute from Sapienza from the University of Rome, Italy in 2013. 

Amoako Boafo (1984- ) is a Ghanaian painter artist whose works center people of the African diaspora underrepresented in contemporary art. He utilizes bold colors and patterns to create self-portraits and portraits of friends and family that he admires. Boafo uses his figures to manipulate the pigments, creating a unique textural and visual experience.  Boafo graduated from the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, Ghana in 2008. He then attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, for his MFA. 

Amy Sherald (1973- ) is an American painter. Sherald is most known for her portrait painting of former First Lady Michelle Obama. Through her portraits, Sherald explores how people construct and perform their identities in response to political, social, and cultural expectations. Her colorful, contrasting canvases demand the viewer to see the subject. She uses a grey scale as a skin tone palette to challenge the idea of color as race. Sherald received her bachelor’s degree in 1997 at Clark Atlanta University. She received her MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. In 2021 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. 

Ana Silva (1979- ) is an Angolan artist working with painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. She uses canvas, wood, metal, acrylic, and fabric, working outside defined perimeters. Silva's aesthetic is a story gently suggested behind the laces and nets where female figures revealed themselves. She is working on three main series: Agua, Child, and Grandmother. Agua highlights the difficulty of accessing clean water in Angola, Child speaks to the disruption of childhood due to the responsibility of having to fetch water, and Grandmother is a reflection on the passage of life of Silva's grandmother and daughter.  Silva studied at the ArCo Higher School in Lisbon. 

Andre Pierre (1916-2005) was a Haitian painter. His paintings depict Vodoun religious ceremonies and deities. He is considered a master painter working in a modernist Haitian style.

Andy Robert (1984- ) is a Haitian painter who balances abstraction with representational  Robert received his BFA in Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore in 2008. He received his Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia in 2011.  Master of Fine Arts at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia

Anina Major (born 1981 in Nassau, The Bahamas) is a Bahamian visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses ceramics, sculpture, installation, video, performance, and mixed media. Best known for transforming traditional Bahamian straw-plaiting techniques into monumental woven-clay forms, Major investigates the relationship between self and place, particularly the emotional negotiations involved in migration, displacement, cultural inheritance, and establishing a home away from one’s birthplace. Her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia and identity, using craft traditions to reclaim experiences, preserve histories, and relocate cultural objects that have been displaced or undervalued.  Major’s signature ceramic language grows from the Bahamian tradition of straw plaiting, a skill she encountered through her grandmother, who produced woven goods for the tourist marketplace. The practice itself carries deeper histories: techniques of weaving and plaiting in The Bahamas developed partly through West African knowledge carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans. Major recreates these forms in clay, replacing organic fibers that eventually deteriorate with fired earth intended to survive. Through this material translation, basketry becomes an archive of ancestry, labor, migration, and cultural persistence.  Major earned a BS in Graphic Design from Drexel University in 2003 and an MFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. Her work has been presented across The Bahamas, the United States, and Europe and is held by institutions including the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, RISD Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Pérez Art Museum Miami. Her honors include a 2026 United States Artists Fellowship, selection as a 2025 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize finalist, the 2024 Armory Show Pommery Prize, the inaugural Future Perfect Prize, and a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Her forthcoming major museum exhibition, Anina Major: The Sacred Mangrove, opens at Pérez Art Museum Miami on October 1, 2026. 

Anthony Akinbola (born 1991, in Columbia, Missouri) is a Nigerian-American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores Black identity, commodity culture, abstraction, and the social meanings embedded in everyday materials associated with Black life. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and found-object assemblage, Akinbola examines self-fashioning, commercial circulation, and cultural value through durags, pomade cans, barbershop imagery, and other objects that carry both intimate and political resonance.  Akinbola received a B.A. in communications and media from SUNY Purchase College. Raised between the United States and Nigeria, he often engages Black hair culture, consumer goods, and material signifiers of diasporic experience, using repetition, stitching, accumulation, and acts of transformation to consider how identity is shaped through commerce, ritual, display, and everyday use. His work frequently moves between sculpture and painting, reimagining familiar objects as formal and conceptual devices that speak to Black individuation, joy, fetishization, and the politics of visibility.  His work has been exhibited at the SCAD Museum of Art, Sean Kelly, Night Gallery, Galerie Krinzinger, Carbon 12, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, and the Queens Museum, and has appeared in group exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. His work is held in the Guggenheim Museum’s permanent collection and the Zabludowicz Collection. Anthony Akinbola lives and works in New York.

Anthony Renelle Reed II (1987- ) is an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. His portraits reflect a desire to represent the vibrancy of Black American culture and the city of Miami. He wants to uplift his community. Reed's work utilizes colorful, thick brushstrokes that frame his subjects confidently and regally.  Reed received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art with an emphasis in Sequential Art from Savannah College of Art & Design in 2015. 

Antonio Obá (1983- ) is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, photography, installations, video, and performance art. His work focuses on the body, Brazilian iconography, and significant events related to Black liberation struggles.