Onajide Shabaka

Onajide Shabaka (born 1948) is a South Florida–based interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work explores the intersections of ecology, memory, African diaspora histories, and material culture. Working across drawing, photography, film, sculpture, land-based practice, and archival research, Shabaka investigates how geography, botany, and migration shape cultural identity and ancestral narratives. His practice often involves walking, field research, and studying plant life as a way of tracing historical paths of the African diaspora and uncovering overlooked or erased histories. Through poetic, conceptual works grounded in natural materials, archival fragments, and field studies, Shabaka creates visual languages that connect environmental histories with personal and communal stories of displacement, survival, and belonging. He lives and works in Miami, FL.