Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Toyin Ojih Odutola (1985- ) is a Nigerian-American artist who creates works on paper. She is interested in skin texture and has reduced her materials to the basics, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels, and charcoal. This results in a very distinctive mark-making style. Developed over months, narratives that emerge through a series resemble a chapter book. Recently, she has created works around landscapes, architecture, and domestic interiors.  Odutola received a BA from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. 

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones (1992- ) works across painting, drawing, and printmaking to explore his Nigerian Yoruba background. With a focus on contemporary perceptions of the Black body, Adeniyi-Jones depicts figures captured mid-dance as a tool to illuminate the significance of body language and dance in a continent with numerous spoken languages. Androgynous forms, deities, and animals populate his work in a celebration and acknowledgment of African identity.  Adeniyi-Jones received his BFA from The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2014 and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2017. 

Turiya Magadlela (1978- ) is a South African artist using textiles with charged stories to create work. Her materials range from pantyhose to correctional service uniforms. Magadlela's work focuses on her experiences with womanhood and motherhood and the loaded history of Black South Africans. Magadlela received her Certificate in Fine Arts from Funda Community College in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1998. She received her National Diploma of Fine Arts from University of Johannesburg, South Africa in 2001. 

Tyler Mitchell (1995- ) is an American, Atlanta born and based fine art and commercial photographer. Much of his fine photography is focused on Black leisure and joy. He seeks to create a "Black utopic vision" with an emphasis on Black enjoying and existing outdoors. His bold colors are moody and contemplative. In 2018 Mitchell was commissioned to photograph Beyoncé for the Vogue September edition. In doing so, he became one of the youngest photographers and the first Black photographer to photograph a Vogue cover. 

Unathi Mkonto (1982- ) is a South African artist working across drawing, installation and sculpture. Drawing is a foundational aspect of his practice. His drawings sometimes act as blueprints for his sculptures, referencing his background in architecture.  Mkonto's work is abstract and takes viewers through his life situating them spatially in everyone's experience.  He received his BA in Architecture from Nelson Mandela University. 

Vickie Pierre is a Haitian-American multimedia artist. Pierre's work explores self-identity, referencing feminine tropes and historical and contemporary cultural politics. In most of her works on paper, the anthropomorphic forms represent both females and males reposing in a dream state. Pulling from Haitian and Yoruba mythologies, the black forms reveal various decorative patterns, interspersed.  Pierre received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, New York in 1997. 

Wangechi Mutu (1972- ) is a Kenyan-American visual artist, known for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work. Much of Mutu's work has explored the female body as subject through collage, installation, and performance. Mutu is She is interested in questions of gender, cultural trauma and transmission, and environmentalism. Her work also pulls from myths and cultural influences from the "Eastern" and "Western" pantheons creating a unique reference point. Strict dichotomies of East/West, beauty/grotesque, and sacred/profane are of little interest to her.  She is interested in that space in the middle where hybridity thrives.   Mutu received a BFA degree from Cooper Union in 1996 and an MFA in sculpture from Yale School of Art in 2000.

Wilfredo Lam (1902-1982) was a Cuban painter and printmaker of African and Chinese descent. He spent about 14 years in Spain starting in 1923 to 1938. He then moved to Paris before settling in New York. His art drew from personal experience during thee Spanish Civil War, both as a soldier and observer, and grief in his personal life. Lam was engaged in Modern movements such as Cubism and Surrealism. His work draws heavily from his experiences in Cuba with special attention to Afro-Caribbean religions such as Santería. He synthesized these two world views resulting in a visual language rich with thin figures, distinct, vertical linework, and a vibrant palette. 

William H. Johnson (1910-1970) was an American painter. He worked through many styles throughout his life including academic, Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, German Expressionism, to "conscious naiveté” or a folk style. In 1926 he traveled to France and this is credited as some of his earliest exposure to modernist forms. He traveled around Europe and returned to New York in 1938 at the onset of World War II. On returning to the United States he d Johnson studied at the National Academy of Design in New York. 

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.