Barbara Jones-Hogu

Barbara Jones-Hogu (born April 17, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois – died November 14, 2017) was an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explored Black pride, political self-determination, community, liberation, and the visual language of the Black Arts Movement. Working across printmaking, painting, drawing, film, and design, Jones-Hogu examined collective identity, cultural affirmation, and social change through bold color, text, figuration, and graphic strategies intended to communicate directly with Black audiences. She was a founding member of AfriCOBRA, the Chicago-based collective established in 1968 to develop a Black aesthetic rooted in accessibility, beauty, and political relevance.  Jones-Hogu studied at Howard University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Institute of Design in Chicago; additional biographical sources also note graduate study in printing at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later MFA study in Independent Film and Digital Imaging at Governors State University. Her work often engages social history, print culture, activism, and popular visual language, using screenprint, woodcut, text, and image to consider Black consciousness, solidarity, beauty, and the political force of representation. Before co-founding AfriCOBRA, she was active in the Organization of Black American Culture and contributed to Chicago’s landmark Wall of Respect mural in 1967.  Her work has been exhibited through major museum and scholarly presentations on Black art and AfriCOBRA, and her work is held by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is recognized as a foundational figure in the Black Arts Movement and in the development of politically engaged Black printmaking in the United States. Barbara Jones-Hogu lived and worked in Chicago.