Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Jota Mombaça (1991- ) is a Brazilian interdisciplinary artist who describes their practice as “non-disciplinary”.  Their practice is influenced by poetry, critical theory, and performance. Gender exploration and anti-colonial framing underpin all of her work. Through installation and performance, she explores the relation between opacity and self-preservation in the experience of racialized trans artists in the Global Art World. Mombaça received her Bachelor of Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil in 2013. They received their Master’s in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in 2017. 

Joyce J. Scott (born September 25, 1948, Baltimore, MD) is an American multidisciplinary artist whose work confronts race, gender, sexuality, violence, and power through sculpture, performance, installation, and craft-based practices. Best known for her virtuosic use of beadwork, Scott transforms traditionally feminized and decorative materials into politically charged forms—figures, garments, and objects that are simultaneously seductive and confrontational. Drawing from African diasporic traditions, humor, satire, and personal narrative, her practice challenges social taboos and exposes systemic injustice while insisting on pleasure, resilience, and agency. Scott’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major museum collections.

Joy Gregory (b. 1959, Bicester, England) is a British visual artist whose multifaceted practice spans photography, video, textiles, and experimental print techniques. Born to Jamaican parents and based in London, Gregory investigates issues of race, beauty, identity, memory, and cultural difference through both historical and contemporary lenses.  As a photographer she makes full use of the media from video, digital and analogue photography to Victorian print processes. In 2002, Gregory received the NESTA Fellowship, which enabled her the time and the freedom to research for a major piece around language endangerment. The first of this series was the video piece Gomera, which premiered at the Sydney Biennale in May 2010. She is the recipient of numerous awards and has exhibited all over the world showing in many festivals and biennales. Her work included in many collections including the UK Arts Council Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, and Yale British Art Collection. She currently lives and works in London.

Joy Labinjo (1994- ) is a British-Nigerian painter. Her large-scale paintings depict historic and contemporary scenes, taking inspiration from family photos, found photos, and archival materials. She explores her experiences of growing up Black, British, and Nigerian in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Bold colors and flat brushwork compromise her work as she explores race, community, family, identity, and power.  Labinjo received her MFA from The Ruskin School of Art, The University of Oxford in 2022 UK and her BFA from the University of Newcastle in 2017. 

Juana Valdes (1963- ) is a Cuban multidisciplinary artist who works across ceramics, printmaking, video, and installations. She explores themes such as race, gender, class, and migration in her work. Her practice is an archive of her migration experiences as an Afro-Cuban woman through the lens of material culture. ⁠Her mapping of African, Asian, and European, Caribbean migrations complicates and unfurls histories of colonialism. Valdes has a strong interest in material as well, focused on their associations with ideas of the "feminine" and manual labor. Valdes received her BFA in Sculpture from the Parsons School of Design in 1991 and her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts New York City in 1993.

Juan Ford (1973-) is an Australian artist who primarily works with painting. His work takes inspiration from nature and aims to create connections between the human relationship with the natural world. 

Juan Roberto Diago (1971- ) is a Cuban mixed media artist, incorporating painting, printmaking, and wood into his work. Racial dynamics in Cuba are a large influence in his work. His work highlights topics that are not given much attention in Cuba, with a large emphasis on the transatlantic slave trade. Many of his works feature a singular expressionless silhouette in his retelling of Cuban history from an expansive perspective. He is a leading member of the new Afro-Cuban cultural movement. Diago studied art at San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havanna, Cuba in 1990. 

Julie Ethel Dash (b. October 22, 1952, New York City, USA) is an American filmmaker, writer, and visual artist whose pioneering work reshaped representations of Black women, memory, and diaspora on screen. She emerged from the L.A. Rebellion cinema movement and became widely celebrated for her landmark feature film Daughters of the Dust (1991), the first full-length film by an African-American woman released theatrically and now preserved by the U.S. Library of Congress for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance. 

Julie Mehretu (1970- ) is an Ethiopian American painter and printmaker who creates large abstract, layered landscapes. Her work explores themes such as colonialism, capitalism, war, global uprising, diaspora, and displacement. Taking inspiration from architecture, music, and, literature her drawings are highly gestural. Recently, she has been interested in the idea that drawing can be an extension of an activist impulse.  Mehretu studied at the University Cheik Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal from 1990-1991. She received her BA from in 1992 and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. 

June Edmonds (1959-) is an artist from Los Angeles, California. Primarily employing the medium of painting, her work is colorful and vibrant. She is informed by the African American experience, as well as by abstraction.

Kachelle Knowles (1990- ) is a Bahamian artist working on paper that explores gender identity, cultural preservation, and its production, and social relations within the Black community. Black men are typically the subjects in her works.  Knowles received her bachelor’s degree in Illustration at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2017.  

Kadir Nelson (1974-) is a visual artist from California. Mainly employing the use of mediums such as painting and illustration, his work considers African American history and culture. He is known for touching on the emotional aspect of art and creative production. 

Kalup Linzy (born July 23, 1977, in Clermont, Florida) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores gender, sexuality, class, family, religion, and the social textures of Black life in the rural American South. Working across video, performance, music, drawing, photography, and painting, Linzy examines identity, desire, and cultural stereotype through satire, melodrama, drag performance, and a deliberately lo-fi aesthetic shaped by soap operas, television, and popular culture.  Linzy received both a BFA and an MFA from the University of South Florida and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work often engages performance, language, community, religion, and media culture, using recurring characters, scripted narrative, singing, costume, and role-play to consider how race, gender performance, queerness, and aspiration are shaped through social expectation and entertainment forms. Across his videos and performances, he frequently appears in drag and inhabits multiple roles, blurring the boundaries between critique, comedy, vulnerability, and fantasy.  His work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and other major institutions, and he has received honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. Kalup Linzy lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (b. 1939-) is a Sudanese painter and art teacher known as one of the founders of The Crystalist conceptual art group in Khartoum. The goal of Khartoum was to allow the all-female artists of the group to distinguish themselves from the traditional male center outlook prevalent in the 1970s Sudanese art scene. Ishag's work uses the concepts of earthliness and the spiritual to discuss humans' connection to the natural world #Sudan #Sudaneseartist #painter #Khartoum #blackart  

Kamal Sinclair is the director of Sundance Institute's New Frontier Lab Programs, a consultant to the Ford Foundation's JustFilms program, and an artist and producer on the transmedia art project Question Bridge: Black Males.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, East Palo Alto, CA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator whose expansive practice investigates language, text, knowledge production, and Black epistemologies. Working across installations, publications, performance-lectures, print, collage, public text works and digital media, Rasheed examines how reading, writing and interpretation function as acts of remembering, forgetting and transformation. 

Kandy G Lopez (born 1987, Bayonne, NJ) is a Dominican-American visual artist whose work explores identity, visibility, and the everyday lives of marginalized communities. Working across fiber art, painting, and mixed media, Lopez is known for her large-scale embroidered portraits made from yarn and mesh, which translate painterly techniques into textured textile forms. Her practice centers on people from her surrounding communities, celebrating their presence, individuality, and cultural histories. Lopez lives and works in South Florida, where she is also an Associate Professor of Art + Design at Nova Southeastern University. Lopez’s work is rooted in identity, cultural memory, representation, and visibility — especially concerning Afro-Caribbean and diasporic experiences. She centers marginalized individuals in her portraits: people from her community, everyday “real” people, sometimes strangers, often chosen because they carry a distinctive presence or energy. 

Kapwani Kiwanga (born 1978, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) is a French-Canadian artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, video, sound, photography, and performance. Research-driven and conceptually rigorous, her work examines systems of power through the lens of suppressed histories, colonialism, institutional structures, and the everyday mechanisms through which authority is exercised and remembered.  Kiwanga studied anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal before pursuing art studies at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. That academic background remains central to her practice: her projects frequently move between fact and speculation, using the visual language of display, classification, architecture, and ceremony to unsettle dominant historical frameworks and create space for marginalized or obscured perspectives. Across bodies of work, she has investigated subjects such as decolonization, race, gender, social control, and diasporic memory, often through materials whose political meanings are subtle but deeply charged.  Her work has been presented widely in major international exhibitions and institutions. In 2024, Kiwanga represented Canada at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with Trinket, a site-specific installation for the Canada Pavilion. Her first major mid-career retrospective, The Length of the Horizon, was presented at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2023. She has also had solo presentations and exhibitions at institutions including the New Museum, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; Serralves Museum, Porto; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Kiwanga is the recipient of several major honors, including the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2020, the Sobey Art Award in 2018, the Frieze Artist Award in 2018, and the Zurich Art Prize in 2022. She lives and works between Paris and Berlin. 

Kara Walker (1969- ) is an American artist who explores gender, sexuality, violence, and history through silhouetted figures. She uses drawing, painting, text, shadow puppetry, film, and sculpture to examine the ongoing trauma of enslaved Africans.  Walker received her BFA in Painting/Printmaking at the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. 

Katesi Jacqueline Kalange (1995- ) is a Ugandan multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, and performance installation. She uses recycled and upcycled materials to create sustainable sculptures with a community.  Kalange received her Bachelor of Art and Industrial Design from Kyambogo University. 

Kehinde Wiley is a portraiture painter known for his large oil paintings of Black men as the center of reimagined works of the old Masters and other famous paintings. In a departure from his usual subjects, here are works depicting Black women with elaborate and detailed hairstyles. It is easy to see Black women wearing the crown they deserve and are not seen often wearing often enough

Keisha Scarville (born 1975, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist whose photographic practice explores loss, latency, diaspora, memory, and the elusive body. Working across photography, mixed media, and book-making, Scarville examines grief, transformation, family history, and belonging through portraiture, self-imaging, and materially resonant compositions that often blur the boundaries between presence and absence.  Scarville earned a B.S. from the Rochester Institute of Technology and studied at Parsons School of Design/The New School. Her work often engages family archive, migration, embodiment, and the emotional afterlives of personal loss, using photography, everyday objects, garments, and serial image-making to consider how identity is shaped through memory, inheritance, and the traces left by those no longer physically present. Her widely discussed series Mama’s Clothes is especially central to her practice, using her late mother’s clothing to create images that hold grief, intimacy, and diasporic belonging in tension.  Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, the Studio Museum in Harlem, ICA Philadelphia, the Brooklyn Museum, and Higher Pictures, among other venues. Her work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, George Eastman Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. She is the recipient of the 2026 Brooklyn Museum UOVO Prize, the 2024 Saltzman Prize in Photography, and the 2023 Creator Labs Photo Fund. Keisha Scarville lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. 

Keith Morrison (born May 20, 1942, in Linstead, Saint Catherine Parish, Jamaica) is a Jamaican-born American artist whose painting-based practice explores Black history, Caribbean identity, migration, memory, mythology, and the psychic afterlives of colonialism. Working across painting, printmaking, and drawing, Morrison examines diasporic experience, social history, and spiritual symbolism through richly layered compositions that move between abstraction, figuration, and surrealist visual language.  Morrison earned both his BFA in 1963 and MFA in 1965 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work often engages Caribbean heritage, folklore, ritual, politics, and historical violence, using painting and printmaking to consider the relationship between personal memory and collective struggle across the African diaspora. Sources note that he worked as an abstract painter from roughly 1965 to 1985 before shifting toward a more figurative and surrealist mode deeply informed by Caribbean history and symbolism. He has also had a significant career as an educator, curator, critic, and academic administrator, and is professor emeritus at Tyler School of Art at Temple University.  His work has been exhibited in major solo and institutional presentations including the Katzen Arts Center, the University of Delaware Museums, and the 49th Venice Biennale. He has received the Commander in the Order of Distinction from Jamaica, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brandywine Workshop, and other honors for both his artistic and educational contributions. Keith Morrison lives and works in the United States. 

Keith Piper (1960- ) is a multimedia artist, curator, and researcher.  In the early 1980s, Piper was a founder member of the Blk Art Group a cohort of young artists of African Caribbean descent. They were inspired by the British Black Arts Movement and sought to answer what Black art was and the future for Black artists.  ⁠He established a research-driven approach to his practice prioritizing exploration over an attachment to any particular media. This means he moves from painting to photography to computer technology fairly easily.  Piper received his BA in Fine Art from Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham in 1983. He received his MA in Environmental Media from the Royal College of Art in 1986. He received two honorary doctorates from the University of Wolverhampton and Coventry University in 2002 and 2023 respectively.  ⁠

Kendrick Daye (1987- ) is an American multi-media artist and the creator of the Black Queer Tarot. Daye is interested in exploring Black, queer narratives through his work, most notably known for his collages in both digital and analog formats. Daye's work pulls heavily from Afrofuturusm, imagining a future where Black, queer people are free to express themselves free of fear and judgment. ⁠

Kennedi Carter (born Dec 31, 1998, Charlottesville, Virginia) is an American artist and photographer whose photographic practice explores Black life, intimacy, memory, beauty, and the sociopolitical dimensions of representation. Working across fine art and editorial photography, Carter examines skin, texture, softness, trauma, love, and community through richly composed portraits and images that center the emotional and aesthetic complexity of Black experience.  Carter studied African American Studies at Duke University. Her work often engages portraiture, archives, memory, and Black southern life, using intimate image-making, stylized composition, and an attention to everyday beauty to consider confidence, care, inheritance, and the visual language of Black self-representation. Her practice moves fluidly between editorial commissions and fine art projects, while maintaining a consistent investment in Black subjectivity and the power of the photographic image.  Her work has been exhibited at the RISD Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Saatchi Gallery, the Harwood Museum of Art, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. She has received recognition including British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch, The New York Times’ “next great image makers” recognition, and Adweek’s Creative 100. Carter is currently based in the American South.

Kennedy Yanko (born 1988, St. Louis, Missouri) is an American sculptor known for her hybrid works that combine salvaged metal with paint skin to create dynamic, materially complex sculptures. Her practice investigates the relationship between strength and vulnerability, permanence and fluidity, often using industrial scrap metal alongside thin sheets of dried acrylic paint that she refers to as “paint skins.” These elements are folded, draped, and suspended to create forms that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Yanko’s work explores the emotional and symbolic possibilities embedded in materials, particularly those that carry histories of labor, industry, and transformation. The heavy steel structures she employs suggest endurance and rigidity, while the delicate, malleable paint skins evoke softness, movement, and fragility. Through this interplay, her sculptures examine the tension between control and release, inviting viewers to consider how physical materials can embody psychological and emotional states. Her approach to abstraction is deeply informed by process. Yanko allows chance, gravity, and the physical behavior of materials to guide the development of each piece, producing sculptural forms that feel both intentional and organic. The resulting works often resemble draped fabric, geological formations, or bodily gestures, creating a sense of movement and presence within static objects. Yanko’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries and institutions internationally, and she has become recognized for expanding the language of contemporary abstraction through sculpture. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Kermit Miller (1973- ) is a Bahamian painter whose works focus on everyday life. His vibrant portraits depict scenes of joy and beauty in daily happenings. 

Kerry James Marshall (1955- ) is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Marshall utilizes a historical approach to his work, engaging with six centuries of Western painting. His figurative works assert Black people into a Western art historical canon. His works often feature subjects with extremely dark skin, an intervention with negative associations with dark skin.  Marshall received his BFA from the Otis Art Institute  in 1978 and later was awarded an honorary doctorate, from the above in 1999. 

Kevin Beasley (1985- ) is an American artist working across performance, sound, and installation. Beasley uses found materials to work through issues of race and power in the United States. He uses found objects such as shirts, colorful house dresses, and durags to create his sculptures. Sound is an important aspect of his work. Sonic elements and live performances connect his work to the physicality of the body and production.  Beasley received his BFA from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, in 2007 and his MFA from Yale University in 2012. 

Khadija Saye (1992-2017), also known as Ya-Haddy Sisi Sayve, was a Gambian-British photographer and activist. Her photography explores aspects of her Gambian-British identity and mixed-faith background (her mother was Christian, and her father is Muslim). Her photographs situate her between two planes, her Gambian heritage and upbringing in the United Kingdom. Saye’s series, Dwellings: in this Space we Breathe, was shown at the 57th Venice Biennale's Diaspora Pavilion. It was a continuation of Saye’s exploration of her identity and heritage, specifically focused on the migration of Gambian spiritual practices.  Saye received her degree in photography University for the Creative Arts at Farnham and obtained a photography degree in 2013.  

Kip Omolade (1969- ) is an American painter was born in Harlem, New York.  and began his art career as a graffiti artist while interning at Marvel Comics and The Center for African Art. He continued his studies at The Art Students League of New York and earned a BFA at the School of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited in galleries around the world and on Good Morning America, Juxtapoz, Huffington Post and Hi-Fructose. Special projects and partnerships include collaborations with Sony Music, Red Bull and Nike. His work was also featured on the album cover of R&B recording artist Fantasia’s latest release “Definition of…Fantasia”. 

Kofi Ansah (1951-2014) was a Ghanaian fashion designer. He was considered a pioneer in promoting modern African styles and design on the international stage. He founded Artdress, a design and creative concept company. His designs blend Western contemporary design and traditional West African art.  Anash received first-class honours degree in fashion design and distinction in design technology from the Chelsea School of Art in 1979. 

Kristen Woollery is an Afro-Trinidadian painter whose vibrant, bright palette is inspired by her Caribbean heritage. The stylized and geometric form of her subjects is informed by African masks, body paints, and textiles. Woollery's work seeks to honor the strength and perseverance of Black women.  

Kudzanai Chiurai (1981- ) is a Zimbabwean artist. He works across drawings, paintings, and video. His work is a commentary of social and political and social cycles and corruption. He draws from his understanding of history and personal experiences to inform his work. Chiurai was born one year after Zimbabwe gained independence from British rule, therefore his practice largely focuses on cycles of political, economic, and social conflict present in postcolonial societies. Chiurai received his BFA from the University of Pretoria in 2006. 

Kwaku Yaro (1995- ) is a Ghanian artist. His work is multidisciplinary, primarily taking the form of painting and textile-based mixed media. He uses upcycled carrier bags, wax prints and jute sacks in his paintings. This varied material reflects the diverse youth in Ghana. Yaro aims to represent the individuals around him, as well as beauty and fashion through his textile portraiture.  Yaro is a member of the Artemartis collective.

Kwamé Azure Gomez (b. 1999 Akron, OH) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, installation, performance, and community-engaged work. His work explores Black identity, ritual, masculinity, spirituality, and ancestral memory, often drawing from Afro-diasporic traditions and personal lineage. Through symbolic imagery and immersive environments, Gomez creates spaces of reflection that honor Black presence, healing, and transformation while challenging inherited narratives around power and visibility.

Kwame Brathwaite (January 1, 1938 – April 1, 2023) was an American photographer, cultural activist, and key visual architect of the Black Is Beautiful movement. Born in Brooklyn to Barbadian immigrant parents and raised in the Bronx, Brathwaite used photography as a tool for Black self-definition, political consciousness, and cultural pride. Over the course of his career, he created an expansive visual archive of Black life, style, music, and activism in Harlem, across New York, and throughout the African diaspora.  Brathwaite is especially recognized for helping popularize the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” through his photographs and his collaborations with his brother Elombe Brath, the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS), and the Grandassa Models. His images celebrated natural Black beauty, African heritage, and the political power of representation at a time when dominant media largely excluded or distorted Black identity. Through portraits, fashion photographs, and documentation of performances and community events, he helped shape a new visual language of pride and self-possession.  Working across photography, photojournalism, and cultural documentation, Brathwaite photographed musicians, activists, models, and everyday people with an eye toward dignity, elegance, and historical presence. His work chronicled pivotal cultural shifts of the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond, connecting art, politics, and Black internationalism. Today, his photographs are widely recognized for their aesthetic force and historical importance, standing as enduring records of Black style, resistance, and beauty.

Ladi Kwali (c. 1925 – 12 August 1984) was a Nigerian potter, ceramicist, and educator celebrated for blending traditional Gwari pottery techniques with Western studio practices. Her work, distinguished by hand-coiled forms, incised and sgraffito decoration, and masterful glazing, elevated everyday vessels into artistic embodiments of heritage, symbolism, and innovation.

Lakela Brown (born 1982, Detroit, MI) is a contemporary sculptor and mixed-media artist whose work celebrates Black culture through bold, tactile forms. Known for her signature plaster reliefs featuring bamboo earrings, rope chains, hair beads, and other iconic symbols of Black style, Brown transforms objects of everyday adornment into monuments of cultural memory. Her work bridges sculpture, printmaking, and collage, often foregrounding motifs linked to 1980s and 1990s hip-hop aesthetics and Black girlhood. Brown’s practice is rooted in honoring the visual language, textures, and materials of the communities that shaped her, translating them into elegant, graphic compositions. She has exhibited at galleries and institutions across the U.S. and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at ICA San Francisco, Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), Reyes | Finn, and Lisa Yuskavage Studio Projects. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Lance Minto Strouse is a Miami-based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores legacy, memory, and the spiritual presence embedded within everyday materials. Rooted in Caribbean and African American cultural histories, Strouse constructs paintings, objects, and mixed-media assemblages that reflect on personal and ancestral narratives. His practice often considers how identity is shaped across generations, how memory is held in the body, and how the unseen—ritual, spirit, intuition—moves through material form. Strouse is emerging as a distinctive voice within Miami’s contemporary art landscape, contributing to dialogues around Black futurity, community, and cultural renewal.

Latoya M. Hobbs, printmaker and painter, makes large-scale portraits of Black women. Hobbs’ work explores ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora.  Hobbs received her B.A. in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and her M.F.A. in Printmaking from Purdue University.

LaToya Ruby Frazier (1982- ) is an American artist working across photography, video, performance, and installation. The camera is a tool towards social justice and change. Frazier creates her work in collaboration with the communities she works with. Her work documents experiences of postindustrialization, communal history, and workers' rights.  Frazier received her BFA in Photography and Graphic Design from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2004. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Performing Arts at Syracuse University in 2007. 

Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948) was an American painter active during the Harlem Renaissance. She painted mostly portraits, but also created some still-life works. Many of her portraits include prominent figures of the first half of the 20th century, including W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Marian Anderson, and Alma Thomas.  Waring studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, completing her studies in 1914. 

Lauren Halsey (1987- ) is an American artist whose work is grounded in the locality of her Southern California home, Los Angeles. Halsey creates site-specific and standalone installations that are inspired by the people in the immediate environment, paying close attention to the experiences of queer, Black, and working-class people. She critiques gentrification while suggesting creative solution.  Halsey received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 2014. She received her BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2012. 

Lavar Munroe (1982- ) is a Bahamian-American artist who works mostly in mixed media painting, cardboard sculpture, and drawing. He is interested in fables and folklore, particularly parallels between stories of the Bahamas and his travels in Africa. He incorporates glass, newspapers, crocheted and synthetic flowers, feathers, and jewelry into his paintings and sculptures. Munroe's work includes personal, historical, and mythological references and sits between a desire to leave home and the longing that accompanies the journey. Munroe received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2013. In 2007 he received his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. 

Lawrence Lemaoana (1982- ) is a South African textile artist. He creates embroidered text with political and social texts on kangas. His work explores the intersection of the mass media and people in South African society. He is also interested in deconstructing myths of masculinity. Lemaoana received a BFA from the University of Johannesburg in 2004. 

Le'Andra LeSeur (1989- ) is an American artist working across video, installation, photography, painting, and performance.  LeSeur is interested in Black femininity and feelings of invisibility. She creates work that honors and centers the trauma experienced by Black women. Taking the audience with her she seeks to revel in the pain and joy that exist simultaneously. LeSeur also seeks to highlight Black queer experiences. 

Leasho Johnson (1984- ) is a Jamaican contemporary artist known for his provocative and thought-provoking works that explore themes of gender, sexuality, and Jamaican culture. Johnson's diverse body of work encompasses painting, sculpture, and mixed media, often incorporating elements of popular culture and Jamaican iconography. His bold and innovative approach to art has earned him recognition both locally and internationally, establishing him as a significant voice in the Caribbean art scene. Johnson received his BFA at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2009 and his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. 

Leilah Babirye (1985- ) is an Ugandan artist based in New York. Known for her abstract sculptures made out of used materials, Babirye's pieces are all “woven, whittled, wielded, burned and burnished”. Her use of discarded materials relates to abasiyazi in Luganda, meaning "rubbish" and is a prerogative to refer to members of the LGBTQIA community. Through material and subject matter, masks, she is asserts that queer identities are not oppositional to African identities.  Babirye studied art at Makerere University in Kampala from 2007 to 2010.