Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Wilson Bigaud (1931-2010) was a Haitian painter. Many of his works depict daily life in Haiti. His early style emphasized perspective and volume and an awareness of the effects of light and shadow. He was a friend and contemporary of Hector Hyppolite. 

Winsom Winsom (1946- ) is a Maroon-Canadian multidisciplinary artist working across textiles, painting, video, and installation. Her work focuses on African spirituality, freedom, and resilience. The religions of Ifa and Ashanti deeply inspire her. Winsom co-founded the Kingston's Black Women's Collective.  Winsom studied at the Jamaica School of Art between 1965 and 1968.

Woody De Othello (born 1991, in Miami, Florida) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores spirit, domestic life, embodiment, and the emotional charge of everyday objects. Working across ceramics, bronze, wood, painting, and installation, De Othello examines the relationship between body, home, and psychic life through warped, anthropomorphic forms that transform clocks, telephones, fans, mirrors, and other familiar objects into uncanny vessels of presence and feeling.  De Othello earned a BFA from Florida Atlantic University in 2013 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2017. His work often engages ritual, ancestry, domestic space, and the spiritual resonance of objects, using clay, bronze, wood, and glaze to consider how ordinary things can hold memory, force, and emotional residue. Multiple sources connect his practice to the West and Central African concept of nkisi, positioning his sculptures as containers of energy and interior life rather than simply representations of household things.  His work has been exhibited at Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Whitney Biennial, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the San Jose Museum of Art, and galleries including Karma and Jessica Silverman. His work is held in collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Woody De Othello lives and works in Oakland, California.

Xaviera Simmons (born 1974, in New York, New York) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores race, power, history, language, landscape, and the social construction of American identity. Working across photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation, Simmons examines visibility, citizenship, political memory, and the layered histories embedded in public and institutional space through conceptual image-making, archival inquiry, and materially varied forms.  Simmons received a BFA from Bard College in 2004 and also studied at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Joseph Beuys Research Project in Düsseldorf. Her work often engages archives, political action, Blackness, language, and social history, using staged and documentary photography, performance, installation, and text to consider how race, capital, and ideology shape the ways bodies move through landscape, civic life, and historical narrative. MoMA materials around her Archive as Impetus project especially emphasize her sustained engagement with institutional history, political gesture, and the archive as a living site of struggle.  Her work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and major international exhibitions and institutional programs. Her work is held in collections including MoMA and the Guggenheim. Xaviera Simmons lives and works in New York.

Xenobia Bailey (b. 1955, Seattle, WA, USA) is an American fine-artist, designer, fiber-art pioneer and cultural activist whose practice re-imagines everyday materials, craft traditions and Afro-diasporic aesthetics through an aesthetic she terms “Fun(k)tional Design.”  She began her career designing crocheted hats and wearable art before scaling up to monumental hand-crocheted mandalas, large-scale installations, public mosaics and immersive environments. Her work fuses textile craft, urban design references, African cosmological motifs and a vibrant, layered palette of color and texture. Bailey’s mission extends beyond making art to creating visual languages of empowerment, visibility, joy and connection rooted in Black homes, households, and community spaces. 

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (1962- ) is a Nigerian-British interdisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture, printmaking, painting, film, and photography. His work examines Western art history and literature and questions cultural and national constructs of identity. With an interest in globalization, he explores the relationship between Africa and Europe and their histories. Shinobard studied Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London in 1989 and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London in 1991. 

Yukultji Napangati (born c. 1970, near Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia) is a Pintupi artist whose paintings are deeply connected to Country, Dreaming narratives, and ancestral knowledge. Working within the Central and Western Desert painting traditions, Napangati creates expansive, rhythmic compositions that map sacred sites, travel routes, and water sources associated with her family’s Country. Her work is characterized by subtle shifts of color, layered dotting, and dynamic surface movement that translate cultural knowledge into contemporary abstraction. Napangati’s paintings communicate continuity, custodianship, and the living presence of Indigenous law and land.

Zana Masombuka (1995- ) is a South African conceptual artist. She works across photography, film, sculpture, and performance. Her work is focused on the intersection of tradition and the modern world in African cultures. She believes humans are spiritual beings, in addition to our physical selves. She is an advocate for Africans interpreting and re-interpreting their histories on their own terms, positioning themselves as global leaders.  Masombuka received her BA from Stellenbosch University in 2017. 

Zanele Muholi FRPS (1972- ) is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation.  Muholi's work focuses on race, gender, and sexuality within a South African context and is a direct response to the dangerous conditions that LGBTQ+ people face in rural townships. For Muholi, this expands queer history and narratives in South Africa. Another ongoing series is, Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), where they take self-portraits which act as a retelling of South Africa's history. Muholi completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg in 2003. They received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, Toronto in 2009.

Zéh Palito (1991- ) is a Brazilian painter whose practice seeks to encourage mutual respect between humans and the natural world. He draws inspiration from Brazilian and African cultures. The subjects of his paintings coexist in fantastical landscapes with plants and animals in harmony. The bright and vibrant palette communicates joy and self-assurance. Despite the cheerful work, his work also speaks to darker political realities and their related trauma.  Palito received his degree in Graphic Design from the Faculty of Administration and Arts of Limeira (FAAL) and his certificate in Fine Art from the Municipal School of Culture and Arts (EMCEA), both in Brazil. 

Zizipho Poswa (1979- ) is a South African ceramicist. Poswa's work is a celebration of her Xhosa heritage. She works to highlight the strength of women and their cultural traditions. 

Zohra Opoku (born 1976, in Altdöbern, former GDR / East Germany) is a Ghanaian-German artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores identity formation, memory, migration, cultural inheritance, and the social and political meanings of dress and textile culture. Working across textiles, photography, installation, performance, video, and printmaking, Opoku examines belonging, ancestry, and self-representation through screen-printed fabrics, garments, self-portraiture, and materially layered installations rooted in personal and collective histories.  Opoku trained in fashion and photography and holds an M.A. in Fashion from Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. Born and raised in East Germany and later relocating to Ghana to reconnect with her ancestral roots, she often uses fabric, clothing, and photographic imagery as carriers of memory and historical meaning. Her work engages archives, family history, healing, and Black diasporic visual culture, using dyed and screen-printed textiles, collage, and installation to consider how identity is shaped by personal experience as well as larger cultural, historical, and socioeconomic forces.  Her work has been exhibited at Zeitz MOCAA, Sharjah Biennial 15, DAK’ART 2022, the Athens Biennale, and in exhibitions with Mariane Ibrahim and other international venues. She has also presented major projects including We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, her first museum survey exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA. Zohra Opoku lives and works in Accra, Ghana.