Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Chelsey Luster is a curator and visual artist based in Baltimore, MD. Working to empower queer Black voices, much of Luster’s work aims to empower marginalized groups and adds to scholarship surrounding intersectionality and contemporary identity. 

Chloë Bass (1984- ) is an American conceptual artist working across performance, situation, conversation, publication, and installation. Taking inspiration from the occurrences within daily life, Bass is known for her research into the scales of intimacy in the illusive normality of existence. Bass starts with the mundane, the things we always do as a starting place, questioning its stability. What exists in the space between the familiar and unfamiliar and how we relate is an ongoing question for Bass.  Bass received her BA from Yale University in 2006 and her MFA from Brooklyn College in 2011.  ⁠

Chris Johnson (born 1948) is an American fine art photographer, educator, author, curator, video and installation artist working primarily with themes related to personal history, chance operations and social justice. He is a professor of photography at the California College of the Arts. His photographic work has been shown in a solo exhibition at Monterey Museum of Art. Johnson's video work in collaboration with the Question Bridge team has been exhibited at Oakland Museum of California, Brooklyn Museum and Portland Art Museum.

Chris Ofili (b. October 10, 1968, Manchester, England) is a British painter and sculptor of Nigerian descent whose richly layered works blend vibrant color, figurative imagery, and unconventional materials—such as glitter, resin and elephant dung—to explore themes of identity, spirituality, race and representation. He emerged as part of the Young British Artists movement in the 1990s and gained international acclaim when he became the first Black (and first painter in over a decade) to win the Turner Prize in 1998. His work challenges the boundaries of painting, collage and sculpture, and situates the Black body and cultural history at the heart of contemporary art discourse.

Christopher Carter is a Miami-based sculptor whose work transforms reclaimed materials into powerful meditations on identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. Born in Albuquerque and raised in Boston, Carter draws from his African American, Native American, and European ancestry to create assemblages that explore the layered histories embedded in the objects and structures around us.  Working primarily with found wood, metal, rope, glass, and industrial remnants, Carter builds large-scale sculptures, installations, and architectural interventions that feel both ancient and futuristic. His practice embraces the material afterlives of discarded objects—salvaging fragments of the urban, the domestic, and the industrial—and recomposing them into forms that evoke ritual, resilience, and survival. Each work carries the weight of transformation: what was once overlooked becomes a vessel of lineage, movement, and lived experience.

Chris Watts (born 1984, in High Point, North Carolina) is an American artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores social and personal narrative, abstraction, embodiment, and the unstable boundary between the visible and the immaterial. Working across painting, installation, drawing, video, and mixed media, Watts examines perception, disappearance, and sacred or meditative space through layered surfaces, translucent materials, and spatial compositions that function like windows into overlapping psychic and symbolic worlds.  Watts studied at the College of Arts and Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Wrocław, Poland, before attending the MFA program at Yale School of Art. His work often engages abstraction, Black embodiment, spirituality, and social history, using painting on soft and sheer textiles, resin, acrylic, silk, and installation to consider visibility, disappearance, and the ways Blackness is imagined or misrecognized within dominant visual culture. More recent work has also drawn from video footage of police violence, removing the figure to emphasize absence and to challenge prescribed modes of representation.  His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Galerie Lelong, Welancora Gallery, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, and other venues in the United States and abroad. He participated in the Art & Law Fellowship Program at Cornell University and was a 2022–2023 Soros Justice Fellow. Chris Watts lives and works in New York and North Carolina. 

Cicely Carew is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist whose exuberant work explores joy, liberation, and embodied experience. Her practice spans painting, printmaking, collage, and installation, often combining vibrant color palettes, gestural abstraction, and layered textures to evoke the complexity and dynamism of being. Carew’s work celebrates Black femininity and spiritual resilience, often drawing on the language of abstraction to explore healing, ancestral memory, and transformation. She holds an MFA from Lesley University and has exhibited widely across the U.S., with her work featured in solo and group shows as well as public art commissions.

Clarence James (1991- ) is an American painter and muralist. His work features abstract and figurative forms, referencing his interest in eno-Expressionism and street art. He explores the tension between individual freedom and cultural influence, examining self. Ultimately, he hopes to drive viewers towards positive change.  Clarence received his BBA from Howard University in 2014. 

Claudette Johnson MBE RA (1959- ) is a British artist whose primary medium is drawing. Johnson's large-scale works depict the vulnerability and candidness of her subjects. Additionally, she is a founding member of the Black British Arts Movement.  Johnson studied Fine Art at Wolverhampton Polytechnic.

Clifford Owens (1971- ) is an American photographer, mixed media, performance artist, writer, and curator. He is best known for his spontaneous works centered around the body and includes interactions with the audience. He challenges the conventional making of art through his physically demanding performances. In these performances, he examines African-American history. Owens attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) then transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he graduated with a BFA in 1998. He received his MFA in 2000 from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. 

Clotilde Jiménez (1990- ) is a multi-disciplinary American artist who works across ceramics, collage, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. His work interrogates race and sexuality, specifically Black queer masculinity. Jiménez's work is a melding of private and public musings referencing historical and contemporary influences.  Jiménez received his BFA in printmaking from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2013 and his MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2018. 

Collen Maswanganyi (b. 1977, Noblehoek, Limpopo, South Africa) is a South African visual artist known for his intricately carved and painted wooden sculptures that explore the intersection of tradition and modern life. Coming from a family of Tsonga woodcarvers, Maswanganyi expands on inherited carving practices by incorporating contemporary narratives, personal symbolism, and social commentary. His expressive figures often depict everyday life, cultural memory, ancestral lineage, and the evolving identity of post-apartheid South Africa, blending craftsmanship with layered storytelling.

Conrad Egyir (1989- ) is a Ghanaian-born, Michigan-based painter. His large-scale surreal works combine West African folklore and domestic scenes. Within this framework he explores themes of triumph, identity, and the collective human spirit. Egyir also uses elements of stamps and passports to trace migration histories.  Egyir received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 2018 and a BFA from Judson University, Elgin, Illinois in 2015. 

American photographer Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978) was a pioneering figure in socially conscious and modernist photography. Working across photojournalism and fine art, she is best known for intimate portraits—particularly of African American artists and communities—and empathetic documentary work. Associated with straight photography and the San Francisco camera circle, Kanaga used the camera as a tool for social awareness, dignity, and human connection.

Coreen Simpson (born February 18, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American artist whose photographic and design practice explores Black cultural life, portraiture, self-representation, beauty, and the dignity of everyday social worlds. Working across photography and jewelry design, Simpson examines identity, style, and community through portraiture, documentary observation, and object-making that centers Black presence within both visual culture and adornment.  Simpson studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design, and she also studied with Frank Stewart at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1977. Her work often engages portraiture, nightlife, fashion, Black social history, and the archive, using direct photographic encounters and mobile studio strategies to consider character, visibility, and the richness of Black life in settings ranging from Harlem barbershops and Queens braiding salons to downtown Manhattan clubs. In addition to photography, she created The Black Cameo collection in 1990, a jewelry line that reimagined the cameo tradition through portraits of Black women.  Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the International Center of Photography, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Anacostia Community Museum, and her photographs were also included in the 2025 exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the National Gallery of Art. She received the Mary McLeod Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women, the Madame C.J. Walker Award, and the National Council of Negro Women’s Legends Award. Coreen Simpson lives and works in New York City.

Corinne Smith (1989- ) is an American multidisciplinary artist working in painting and illustration. Smith is inspired by dreams, plant medicine, and color to explore a deeper relationship to self and spiritual realms. They work to connect with ancestors and decolonize ways of knowing. Ultimately, their work centers joy while navigating grief and loneliness.  Smith received a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Michigan. 

Cornelius Tulloch is an American painter, photographer, and architect. Tulloch's work explores how bodies exist between cultures, borders, and characteristics to create spatial impact. With colorful, bold works, he centers contemporary Caribbean-American life. 

Criola (born 1990) is a graphic artist and muralist based in São Paulo, Brazil. Criola employs graffiti art to celebrate the beauty of black women in her community of Belo Horizonte and the cultural significance of diversity in Brazil. In 2022, Criola was commissioned to create a public mural in the Miami Design District representing the aesthetics of global black women.

Cristiano Mangovo (1982- ) is an Angolan artist. Employing the use of mediums including painting, installation, performance, and more, his work is surreal and expressionistic. Swirling limbs and clothing are reconfigured into new forms. Many of his pieces consider the relationship between humans, plants, and animals. Driven by social and political realities, he critiques corrupt systems.  A recurring motif in his work is double mouths, one restricted by fear and one speaking freely.  Mangovo graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. 

C. Rose Smith (1995- ) is an American photographer who is interested in photography’s role in constructing identity. Her work subverts social norms as it interrogates history.  Smith received her MFA in Photography & Related Materials from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2024 and her BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2017. 

Crystal Z Campbell (1980- ) is an American sculptor, printmaker, and experimental filmmaker of  Black, Filipinx, and Chinese descent. Campbell's work excavates lesser-known histories and "underloved" stories. They work through and within and the archives omissions, finding complex­ity in public secrets. 

Cydne Jasmin Coleby (1993- ) is a Bahamian interdisciplinary artist working in digital and mixed media. Starting with personal and family photographs and other archival materials, Coleby transcribes their experiences through the visual motifs such as Bahamian Junkanoo and bright, vibrant colors. Processing trauma, she complicates the narrative of a tropical paradise.  Coleby received her associate's degree from the University of the Bahamas in 2013. 

Danielle McKinney (born 1981, Montgomery, Alabama) is an American painter whose intimate, psychologically charged works center Black women in moments of solitude, reflection, and interiority. Working primarily in oil on linen, McKinney creates quiet, atmospheric scenes drawn from memory, personal photographs, and imagined narratives, often depicting women alone in domestic or private spaces. Her paintings resist spectacle, instead foregrounding stillness, vulnerability, and self-possession as forms of power. Through muted palettes, sparse compositions, and deliberate pacing, McKinney reclaims space for Black female interior life beyond stereotype or performance. She earned her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally. McKinney lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Daniel Lind-Ramos (born 1953) is an African-Puerto Rican painter and sculptor who lives and works in Puerto Rico. Lind-Ramos paints on canvas with oil using traditional and uncommon applications techniques from brushes to spatulas. He also works with recycled or reused materials such as cardboard, wire screen, discarded appliances, car parts, the foliage of coconut palm trees, broken musical instruments and other used items.

Daniel Morel (1951- ) is a Haitian photographer. He takes pictures of his natal country, capturing culture, history, and people. His photographs have been featured in national and international publications such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Wall Street Journal. 

Darrel Ellis (1958-1992) was a mixed-media artist whose unique approach to creating portraits with painting and photography depicted family through a reimagined lens, bringing a new life and fresh perspective in black and white. His life was cut short at the age of 34, but his work continues to be exhibited.

David C. Driskell (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020) was an American artist, scholar and curator; recognized for his work in establishing African-American Art [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_art] as a distinct field of study.[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Driskell#cite_note-Genzlinger-1][2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Driskell#cite_note-HistoryMakers-2] In his lifetime, Driskell was cited as one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of African-American Art.[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Driskell#cite_note-3] Driskell held the title of Distinguished University Professor of Art, Emeritus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeritus], at the University of Maryland, College Park [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Maryland,_College_Park].

David Emmanuel Noel (1972- ) is a British painter, illustrator, and designer—much of his work centers on family, relationships, society, and environmental issues. His paintings often feature swirls of vibrant colors highlighting his expressive brushstrokes. 

David Hammons (1943-) is an American artist who works to create sculptures, installation art, performance art, and more. He is known for taking inspiration from personal experience as well as providing a platform for the life and experiences of African-American individuals. Hammons creates narratives from important influences in the production of visual art such as Dada and the Black Arts Movement. 

David Hartt (born 1967, Montreal, Canada) is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. Working across photography, film, installation, and sound, Hartt’s practice explores history, architecture, modernity, and the cultural conditions that shape social and built environments. His work is characterized by research-driven inquiry and a cinematic visual language that blends documentary and speculative approaches. Hartt received a BFA from the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa in 1991 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. He has received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a United States Artists Fellowship. He has participated in major international exhibitions and biennials, including representing Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2013. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and is held in the collections of major museums across North America and Europe. 

David Shrobe (1974-) is a mixed media artist known for his assemblage paintings which take everyday materials and combine them to create art. His works piece together items from his life in Harlem, New York, allowing him to create narratives about history, identity, and memory. Shrobe is also known to challenge traditional portraiture and actively aims to create new and timeless work. 

Dawit Adnew (1973- ) is an Ethiopian painter based in Addis Ababa. He is influenced heavily by his studies of African masks and iconography and his background as a textile designer. Being drawn to beauty and serenity, much of his portraits feature lush, vibrant scenes filled with fruits and flowers.  Adnew studied at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University. 

Dawn Okoro (1980- ) is a multidisciplinary artist who employs the use of fashion mixed with her love of art. Taking inspiration from fashion design. Okoro is known for her figurative work whether it is painting, drawing, etc. The featured work was used as part of her solo exhibition VantaBlack, at Rice University. The event features acrylic paintings on canvas. 

Dawoud Bey (born 1953, Queens, New York) is an American photographer and educator whose work centers Black life, history, and representation through deeply engaged portraiture and landscape practices. Emerging in the 1970s with a series of street portraits taken in Harlem, Bey has consistently used photography as a means of collaboration, dialogue, and witnessing, often working closely with his subjects to create images that foreground presence, dignity, and agency. Over the course of his career, Bey has developed a range of photographic approaches, from large-format portraiture to immersive landscape and historical projects. His work frequently addresses themes of memory, community, and the afterlives of slavery and racial violence in the United States. In projects such as The Birmingham Project (2012), he commemorates the victims of the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing through paired portraits of young people and adults, creating a temporal dialogue across generations. In Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017), Bey turns to landscape photography to evoke the experience of the Underground Railroad, using dark, atmospheric imagery to suggest movement, concealment, and the search for freedom. Bey’s practice emphasizes the ethical dimensions of representation, positioning the photographic encounter as a space of mutual respect and shared authorship. His work challenges historical and contemporary visual narratives by centering Black subjects as complex individuals rather than objects of observation. In addition to his artistic practice, Bey has had a significant impact as an educator, mentoring generations of artists through his teaching. His work has been exhibited widely at major institutions internationally and is held in leading museum collections. Bey lives and works in Chicago.

Deana Lawson (born 1979, in Rochester, New York) is an American artist whose photographic practice explores Black intimacy, identity, spirituality, desire, family, and the visual politics of representation across the African diaspora. Working across staged portraiture, large-scale photography, moving image, and assemblage, Lawson examines the emotional and symbolic dimensions of Black life through carefully composed tableaux, vernacular references, and a richly cinematic attention to gesture, space, and adornment.  Lawson studied photography at Pennsylvania State University, where she received her BFA in 2001, and later earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Her work often engages portraiture, social history, family album aesthetics, spirituality, and diasporic visual culture, using staged interiors, found imagery, and highly choreographed compositions to consider beauty, vulnerability, power, and the contradictions of photographic truth. She is also the inaugural Dorothy Krauklis ’78 Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University.  Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the High Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. She received the Hugo Boss Prize in 2020, becoming the first photographer to win the award, and has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Aaron Siskind Fellowship Grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant. Lawson lives and works between New York and Los Angeles. 

Deborah Roberts (1962-) is an artist known for her use of  mixed media. Her work takes the form of social critique, aiming to address beauty standards and stereotypes. Specifically, her art considers women of color and incorporates symbolism and multiple layers to create varied and individual meaning.

Deborah Willis (1948- ) is an American photographer and scholar. Much of her work - both artistic and academic - centers on Black aesthetics and beauty. Willis works closely with the archives, sometimes pulling from personal histories. She is also a quilter, incorporating photographs into her finished quilts.  Willis received her BFA in photography from Philadelphia College of Art in 1975, an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in 1979, an MA in art history from City College of New York in 1986, and a PhD from the Cultural Studies Program of George Mason University in 2001.

Debra Cartwright (1988- ) is an American painter and printmaker. Her work balances abstraction and figuration. Cartwright explores the relationship between the Black female body and American medical history. She examines how historical systems have influenced present discrepancies.  Cartwright received her BA in Art History from the University of Virginia in 2010 and AA in Communications Design from Parsons School of Design in 2012. She received her MFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2023. 

Derek Fordjour (b. 1974) is an American interdisciplinary artist who works in video, sculpture, and painting. His work features social gatherings and other cultural rituals with figures such as athletes, performers, and crowds. The background of each work is a carefully constructed collage utilizing cardboard, newspaper, and other materials. The varied textures are as dynmanic as the figures that rest on the surface. Fordjour received a BA from Morehouse College and an Ed. M in Arts Education from Harvard University. He received an MFA from Hunter College in New York.  

Derrick Adams (1970- ) is an artist working across painting, sculpture, collage, performance, video, and public art. Much of his work centers on Black joy and leisure. His recognizable style comprises angular and flat bold colors. In 2022, he established Charm City Cultural Cultivation, a non-profit organization to support and encourage underserved communities in Baltimore through events conducted by three entities: The Last Resort Artist Retreat, a residency program that subscribes to the concept of leisure as therapy for the Black creative; The Black Baltimore Digital Database, a collaborative counter-institutional space for collecting, storing, and safekeeping the data of local archival initiatives; and Zora’s Den, an online and in-person community of Black women writers, including a writers’ circle, and a monthly reading series that strive to promote instruction, support, and social engagement.  Adams received his BFA at Pratt Institute and his MFA at Columbia University

Devan Shimoyama (1989- ) is a painter, photographer, and mixed-media artist born and raised in Philadelphia. His colorful, fantastical works explore Black and queer bodies from his perspective. His paintings incorporate materials such as jewels, black glitter, rhinestones, and sequins. These materials point to an inspiration in drag culture and Black culture more broadly. Shimoyama's work uncovers the power of what is underneath the glitter and rhinestones.  Shimoyama earned a BFA from Pennsylvania State University with in Drawing and Painting in 2011 and received his MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 2014.⁠

Devin Allen was born and raised in West Baltimore. Allen gained national attention when Time Magazine @time [https://www.instagram.com/time/] published his documentary photograph of Baltimore Uprising on its cover in May 2015 – only the third time the work of an amateur photographer appeared on Time's cover. These shots are included in his book “A Beautiful Ghetto” (2017). 

Devin B. Johnson (1992- ) is an American multidisciplinary artist. He oscillates being representational and abstract work in a meeting of movement and memory. This alludes to the intangibility of Blackness. His work is layered and textured, a process that communicates his interest in reflecting on urban landscapes and temporal reality.  Johnson received his BA in Fine Arts from the California State University of Channel Islands in 2015 and his Master of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in 2019.  

Devin N. Morris (1986- ) is an American artist who works across assemblage, collage, video, and installation. Morris's work is an exploration of memory situated in surreal landscapes. His work is an exploration of racial and sexual identity. His work is built from improvisation based on the changing surroundings that are reflection on family and space.  He is the founder of 3 Dot Zine. It is a platform to explore new ideas and show the work of Black and Brown people. 

Devorah Perez is an American sculptural and installation artist. She works across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her minimalist work explores abstraction, materiality, and perception. Perez creates works that serve as resistance, pushing beyond any singular limitation, with interactions between space, material, and light.  Perez received her bachelor’s degree from New World School of the Arts in 2016, and her Master of Fine Arts from Florida International University in 2020.

Diana Eusebio is a Peruvian-Dominican textile artist based in Miami. Through intimate portraiture and carefully composed scenes, Eusebio creates visual narratives that foreground dignity, reflection, and quiet strength, offering nuanced representations that challenge historically limited portrayals of Afro-Caribbean women. Working primarily in painting and drawing, Eusebio combines vibrant color, patterned textiles, and richly layered backgrounds to situate her subjects within environments that speak to identity, heritage, and belonging. Her compositions frequently highlight gesture, gaze, and posture, allowing subtle expressions of vulnerability, strength, and introspection to emerge. In doing so, she constructs spaces in which Black femininity is presented with care and nuance, expanding the visual language of contemporary Caribbean portraiture. Eusebio’s practice also reflects broader conversations about representation within global art history. By centering Afro-Caribbean women as complex subjects rather than symbolic figures, her work challenges long-standing hierarchies of visibility and power within visual culture. The intimacy of her paintings invites viewers to encounter her subjects not as distant icons, but as individuals embedded within familial, cultural, and communal contexts. Through expressive figuration and luminous palettes, Eusebio contributes to a growing movement of artists across the African diaspora who are reshaping contemporary portraiture. Her work celebrates the beauty, presence, and multiplicity of Black womanhood while affirming the importance of cultural memory and self-definition within Caribbean visual practice.

Didier William (1983- ) is a Haitian painter. His large paintings explore the intersection of myth, personal history, and Haitian narratives. Many of the figures in his work have eyes on their entire bodies, resisting classification by either race or gender. He is interested in the spaces diasporaic Black and queer communities occupy and how their identities are formed.  William received his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. He received his MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 2009.

Dindga McCannon (born July 31, 1947, Harlem, New York) is an American multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, fiber art, assemblage, and mixed media. Emerging during the late 1960s and 1970s, McCannon became associated with the Black Arts Movement and was a founding member of a collective formed in 1971 that advocated for the visibility and recognition of Black women in the art world. Her practice centers the experiences, histories, and cultural contributions of Black women, often portraying figures drawn from everyday life, historical memory, and literary or spiritual traditions. McCannon’s work frequently incorporates textiles, beading, embroidery, and found materials, blending fine art with craft traditions historically associated with women’s labor. Through these material choices, she elevates domestic and communal practices into powerful forms of visual storytelling. Many of McCannon’s works celebrate Black women as caregivers, creators, intellectuals, and community leaders, positioning them as central figures in cultural and political life. Her compositions are often vibrant and richly textured, combining figurative imagery with symbolic motifs and layered surfaces that evoke personal memory, collective history, and diasporic heritage. Beyond her studio practice, McCannon has also been active as an educator and curator, contributing to generations of artists and advocating for expanded representation within museums and cultural institutions. Today she is recognized as a pioneering voice in Black feminist art and an influential figure in the development of fiber-based contemporary practice.

Dineo Seshee Bopape (1981- ) is a South African multidisciplinary artist. She uses natural materials such as bricks, soil, and timber alongside video, sound, and archival images. Her work explores socio-political notions of memory (personal/collective, the known/unknown), narration, and representation as connecting manifestations.  Bopape graduated from De Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2007 and received an MFA at Columbia University in 2010. 

Dionne Lee (born 1988, in New York, New York) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores landscape, survival, power, memory, and the fraught relationship between blackness and the American land. Working across photography, collage, sculpture, and installation, Lee examines how the natural environment can function simultaneously as a site of refuge, danger, inheritance, and historical erasure through manipulated photographs, fragmented imagery, and materially layered interventions.  Lee received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2017. Her work often engages landscape, the body, hunting, camouflage, survivalism, and Black spatial history, using darkroom manipulation, collage, sculptural assemblage, and serial image-making to consider how race shapes belonging, vulnerability, and movement through the natural world. Across her practice, she reworks photographic images to trouble ideas of mastery, ownership, and visibility, often positioning Black presence within terrains historically coded as white, masculine, or exclusionary.  Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and has held residencies at Light Work, the Chinati Foundation, and Unseen California. Dionne Lee lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.