Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Nelo Teixeira (1974- ) is a Congolese multidisciplinary artist working across painting, collage, assemblage, sculpture, and installation. He uses found materials such as metal cans, wooden crates, plastics, fabrics, and urban debris in his works. He combines visual and linguistic to evoke feelings of memory, precarity, and resilience. 

Nelson Stevens (1938-2022) was an American muralist, printmaker, painter, as well as a member of AfriCOBRA. He joined in 1969, a year after the collective was founded. His bright, vibrant pieces seek to inspire pride in Blackness. His work with AfriCOBRA sought to develop a Black aesthetic to uplift and inspire the Black community towards self-determination.  Stevens received a BFA from Ohio University in 1962 and in 1969 he earned a MFA in studio art and art history from Kent State University in 1969.

Neo Matloga (b. 1993) is a South African visual artist whose large-scale mixed-media works blend drawing, collage, and painting to explore domestic life, memory, and identity in post-apartheid South Africa. His monochromatic palette and layered imagery depict intimate scenes of family, community, and togetherness, reconfigured through his signature technique of cut-out photographic elements, charcoal and ink. 

Ngozi Ajah Schommers (1974- ) is a German-Nigerian artist working across drawing, installation, painting, photography, and performance art to explore women's experiences and histories from pre-colonial West Africa. She is also interested in Igbo hair heritage and the realities faced by African migrants in Europe. 

Nick Cave (born February 4, 1959, Fulton, Missouri) is an American artist, educator, and designer whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, performance, installation, and fashion. He is best known for his iconic Soundsuits—elaborate, wearable sculptural forms made from found objects, textiles, beads, and other materials—that conceal the wearer’s identity while amplifying movement, sound, and presence. Cave began developing Soundsuits in the early 1990s in response to the beating of Rodney King, creating works that function as both armor and instrument. These suits transform the body into a site of protection, resistance, and celebration, obscuring markers of race, gender, and class while producing sound through motion. Activated through performance, they blur boundaries between sculpture, dance, and ritual. Across his broader practice, Cave addresses issues of race, violence, identity, and social justice, often using exuberant color, pattern, and material excess to confront difficult histories. His installations frequently incorporate immersive environments and community participation, creating spaces that balance critique with joy, spectacle, and collective experience. In addition to his studio work, Cave has had a significant impact as an educator, serving as a professor and former chair of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited widely at major institutions internationally and is held in leading museum collections. He lives and works in Chicago.

Nina Chanel Abney (1982- ) is an American visual artist. During her career, Abney's style continued to evolve. She incorporated more complex compositions and began experimenting with larger-scale works and mixed-media installations. Her pieces explore themes such as identity, social justice, and societal power dynamics. Much of her work comprises of bright, graphic elements composed with an angular composition. Abney attended Augustana College in where she received a BFA with a dual major in studio art and computer science in 2004. She also attended the Chicago Art Institute and the Parsons School of Design where she received an MFA in 2007. A

Nneka Jones (1997- ) is an American multidisciplinary artist interested in painting, drawing, sculpting, and embroidering. Her work responds to social and environmental issues. Her artwork advocates for the protection of women of color and is most known for realistic embroidered portraits. Jones’ ongoing “Target” series confronts the trafficking of girls and women in the Caribbean.  Jones received a BFA from the University of Tampa in 2020. 

Noah Davis (1983-2015) was an American painter. He sought to depict Black life outside of negative stereotypes. Inspirations for his work include everyday life, family histories, ancient Egyptian cosmologies, the racism of American media, art history, and architecture. Rich and varied color palettes are employed to create work that sits between the surreal and real. In 2012, Davis founded the Underground Museum alongside his wife, Karon Davis, as not only an exhibition and community programming space.  Davis studied painting at the Cooper Union School of Art from 2001 to 2004. 

Nona Faustine (1977-2025) was an American photographer. Early in her career, she focused on documentary photography. She eventually pivoted towards conceptual work focused on the Black female experience and American history.  Faustine received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1997, and an MFA from the International Center of Photography at Bard College in 2013. 

Nontsikelelo Mutiti (1982- ) is a Zimbabwean visual artist and educator. She takes a conceptual view of publishing, archiving practices, and institution building. She approaches books as a time-based medium that physically engages the viewer. As her educator, she is interested in systems of communication and learning that pre-date colonial frameworks of the written word in Zimbabwe.  Mutiti holds a diploma in Multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design. 

Norman Lewis (1909-1979) was an American painter and printmaker. He was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance movement in New York. Early in his career, he created figurative work in the social realist school. He felt later that social realism was unable to invoke the social changes he wanted so he shifted his style towards abstract expressionism. Despite, this stylistic shift he remained committed to social change. 

Nyancho NwaNri is a Gambian-Nigerian photographer. NwaNri's work focuses on the environment, social issues, languages, and history.

Olyseye works across sculpture and photography. He is deeply interested in the Black experience. Oluseye coined the term "diasporic debris", to describe the artifacts, discarded materials and found objects he collects during his travels. He believes that Blackness is something unfixed and ever-changing and so much must his practice, blending the contemporary and historical.  Oluseye received a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Masters of Science in Entrepreneurship from Bayes Business School, University of London, UK. 

Omar Victor Diop (1980-) is a Senegalese photographer. Diop is both a fashion and fine arts photographer. At one point in time, he produced seventy percent of Dakar's commercial advertising. His fine art photographs meld photography with other art forms, including textile design, fashion design, and creative writing. Serving as subject, his portraits explore historical events or model him after African leaders. Additionally, environmentally is explore through his work.  graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in France. 

Pamina Sebastião (1988- ) is an Angolan multidisciplinary artist working with video, drawing, collage, and photography. One of their activist avenues is their art, interrogating coloniality and centering queer experiences.  Sebastião received a Master's in International Law and Relations with a focus on African Human Rights System from Lisbon University, Portugal in 2015 and a Law degree from Catholic University, Angola in 2011. 

Patricia Encarnación (1991- ) is a Dominican multimedia artist based in New York. She works with video, photography, and sculpture. Her work investigates the tourist and consumerist gaze that is often directed at the Caribbean. Ultimately she explores the lasting effects colonialism on the Caribbean and Latin America through everyday objects and the myth of the “tropical”. Encarnación received an AAS degree in Illustration and Fine Arts from Altos de Chavon, the School of Design. She then was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to complete her BFA at Parsons, The New School of Design, New York, in 2014. She then received a full-tuition scholarship for the graduate program in the Caribbean Studies concentration in Museum Studies at NYU, where she graduated in 2022.

Patrick Bongoy (1980- ) is a Congolese sculptural artist. He works mostly with waste materials such as tires, inner tubes, industrial packaging, jute sacking, textiles, and ropes. His figurative and abstract works reference traditional Congolese basket-weaving while referencing the immense labor that goes into the objects. Bongoy urgently highlights the high cost of human life at the expense of natural resources for technology. Important to him is the forced migration, homelessness, and displacement due to larger social and political elements at machinations.  He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. 

Paula Wilson (1975- ) is an American interdisciplinary artist who works across printmaking, film, and installation. She has a deep interest in femininity and the environment. Her entry point into her work is through a naturalist, educator, and ecosexual lens. Her practice seeks to find space between art and life, creating an accessible space.  Wilson received her BFA from Washington University, Saint Louis, MO in 1998 and her MFA from Columbia University, New York, NY in 2005. 1998    

Paulo Nazareth (1977- ) is a Brazilian performance, video, and photography artist. Nazareth's practice brings awareness to the experiences of marginalized identities, colonialism, and racism. Through simple gestures, he foregrounds his relationships with the people around him. 

Philippe Walter Marie Dodard (1954- ) is a Haitian illustrationist painter, and sculptor. Expressionist and vibrant, Dodard's work oscillates between figurative and abstraction scenes applied with thick brushstrokess. Reoccuring themes in his work include animals, landscapes, and women and children. 

Philomé Obin (1892-1986) was a Haitian painter. He depicted daily life as well as Haiti's complex history. His flat style is insight into public space in Haiti. He is one of the founders of the  Cap-Haitien school of painting (named for the community in the north of the country). 

Phoebe Beasley (1943- ) is an American painter, collagist, printmaker, and mixed media artist. Her colorful work focuses on scenes from everyday life. She is the only artist whose work has been awarded the Presidential Seal under two different U.S. Presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Beasley received her BFA in art education from Ohio University in 1965. She received her MFA from Kent State University. Additionally, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Ohio University in 2005. 

Prince Gyasi Nyantakyi (1995- ) is a Ghanaian photographer. He is co-founder of Boxedkids, a non-profit organization helping kids from Accra get an education. Prince Gyasi's hallmark style includes colorful and emotional photographs depicting life in Accra, Ghana—all taken with his iPhone. His choice of bold, bright backgrounds highlights the beauty of Black skin. 

Préfète Duffaut (1 January 1923 – 6 October 2012) was a Haitian painter. Born in Cyvadier, Sud-Est, near the seaport of Jacmel, where he lived and worked. Duffaut was one of the painters, alongside important Haitian artists such as Gesner Abelard and Rigaud Benoit, at the Centre d'Art in the Haitian capital. In the early 1950s Duffaut was one of several artists invited to paint murals in the interior of the Cathedral of Sainte Trinité (largely destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake) in Port-au-Prince; his works there were titled "The Temptation of Christ" and "The Processional Road" (also referred to as the "Procession of the Crossing Guard"). Duffaut paints in the vernacular style and his oeuvre typically consists of fantastical "imaginary cities" (villes imaginaires), that often contain coastal elements with boats. The cityscapes are strongly influenced by the coastal city of Jacmel. Another recurrent theme, especially in earlier works, is imagery associated with Vodou.

Purvis Young (1943-2010) was a Bahamian-American artist. A self-taught artist, Young had an interest in art as a child and revisited it as a young adult. A voracious reader, he was inspired by artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, Honoré Daumier, and Pablo Picasso. Young painted on wooden panels frequently. His work is characterized by its expressionist syle, works guided by his "inner eyes". He often explored race and the human condition in his work. 

Queen Nwaneri is a painter born in Italy, raised in Nigeria, and currently based in Australia. These global experiences inform her work and convey the human condition's universality beyond borders. 

Rachel Jones (1991- ) is a British artist who uses sound, performance, painting, and installation to explore psychological truths through abstraction. Jones grapples with the challenges of finding visual means to convey existential concepts. She replicates symbols to create associative relationships as part of her ongoing investigation of identity and abstract representation of the internal structures of Black life. Jones' work relates the various ways the Black body has been depicted through history and pushes past modes of figurative representation.

Radcliffe Bailey (1968-2023) was an American multidisciplinary artist who worked across painting, sculpting, and mixed media. A deep interest in African American and Southern histories informs his work.  Using religion, music, baseball, slavery, and Atlanta’s rich history pertaining to both the American Civil War and the civil rights movement of the 1960s Bailey created installations that probed African diasporic histories. He often used old family photos and piano keys in works that were personal yet accessible.  Bailey received his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991. 

Rashid Johnson (1977- ) is an American artist from Chicago. His work often depicts a range of mediums, such as sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation. They showcase historical occurrences, philosophy, cultural viewpoints, and his narrative. Much of his work explores themes of race and class pulled from autobiographical and broader Black American life.  Johnson received a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2000 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. 

Reginald O’Neal (L.E.O.) (1992- ) is an American painter. O'Neal typically utilizes a dark, muted palette in his portraits. Much of his work features his family, community, and experiences. They are his personal experiences but lend themselves to a broader Black experience. O'Neal sometimes mediates on themes of death and decay as an unfortunate point of life. Currently, his work focuses on his community and beliefs. 

Renell Medrano (1992- ) is a Dominican-American commercial and artistic photographer and director. Medrano seeks to get to the "truth" of her subjects. Past subjects include Kendell Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Kendrick Lamar, and the Venus sisters. She has been creating images since she was a teenager. In addition to her work with musical artists, she creates work exploring her Dominican heritage. Medrano received her BFA in Photography at Parsons The New York School for Design. 

René Peña (1957- ) is a Cuban photographer. Peña has been taking photographs since he was a child. He shoots primarily in black and white is focused on duality duality between human inability to escape institutionalization and human desire for individualism. Individuals all exist within systems -- family, religion, class, etc. despite a belief that individuals possess boundless freedom.  René Peña graduated from the University of Havana with a specialization in English.

René Tavares (1983-  ) is a São Tomean multidisplinary artist working across photography, video, painting, drawing, and installation. Grounded in a rigorous research practice, Tavares focuses on social and political issues experience in African countries. He questions forgotten and neglected heritages hallenging the rigidity of categories and prejudices through abstract, gestural, and figuration works.  Tavares holds a Bachelor's in Fine Arts and Visual Arts from the Dakar School of Fine Arts, Senegal, a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts, Painting and Photography from the Rennes School of Fine Arts, France, and a Master's in Art and Heritage Sciences from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon Portugal.

Renée Green (b. 1959, Cleveland, Ohio, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker whose work spans sculpture, architecture, photography, video, sound, and installation. Her practice draws on cultural anthropology, historical archives, literary and philosophical sources, and is often research-intensive—creating layered installations that examine memory, exchange, language, and the circulation of ideas. 

Richard Hunt (born September 12, 1935, Chicago, IL – died January 16, 2023) was a pioneering American sculptor whose work fused abstraction, organic form, and industrial materials to explore history, mythology, and the African American experience. Working primarily in welded metal, Hunt drew inspiration from nature, music, literature, and the social realities of Black life in the United States, creating dynamic sculptures that balance movement, tension, and lyricism. Over a career spanning more than six decades, he became one of the most influential sculptors of the postwar period and the most widely represented Black sculptor in public art collections in the U.S. His work is held by major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Rick Lowe (1961- ) is an American artist known for his social-practice art. Lowe has worked both inside and outside institutions to create community art projects.  Lowe's practice has focused primarily on creatively transforming neighborhoods and communities, This led him to found Project Row Houses, an arts and community center in Hoston, Texas. Lowe's artistic practice includes painting and installation art and later "social" sculpture. ⁠ Lowe received a degree from Columbus State University in 1982 and studied at Texas Southern University between 1990 and 1992.  

Rigaud Benoit (1911–1986) was a Haitian painter. His work is known for its careful draughtsmanship, muted colors, and humor in his narrative works. Many of his surrealist works depict Voodoo deities or scenes. Benoit's paintings often depicted daily life. 

Rita Mawuena Benissan (1995- ) is a Ghanaian-American multidisciplinary artist working across textiles, photography, painting, sculpture, and installation. A large focus of her work is on the Royal Umbrella as a symbol of Ghanaian cultural heritage. She strives to communicate the beauty and power of her people.  Benissan received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Apparel and Textile Design from Michigan State University in 2017 and her Master of Fine Arts in photography and an African Studies Program Certificate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021.

Rodney Ewing (1964- ) is an American multidisciplinary artist working through installation, drawings, and mixed media. Ewing's work intersects body and place, memory and fact, and re-examines human histories, cultural conditions, and trauma. He is interested in the understudied historical objects, individuals, spaces, and events of the Black Diaspora. Ewing strives to create works that invite the viewers in for careful contemplation and observation.  Ewing received his Master of Fine Art: Printmaking, from West Virginia University in 1992 and his Bachelor of Fine Art: Printmaking from Louisiana State University in 1989. 

Romare Bearden (1911-1988) was a multimedia artist best known for his use of collage. Taking inspiration from artists such as Giotto, Picasso, Cezanne, and African art, Bearden is known for combining a variety of artistic styles and elements into his own pieces. Much of his work considers the contemporary Black American experience and represents Black culture.

Romuald Hazoumè (1962- ) is a Beninese sculptor who only uses recycled materials in his work. Through the manipulation of material, he communicates his stance against slavery, corruption, trafficking, and current abuses. He sees his role in two ways, a protector of Yoruba cultural values and someone is improving Beninese attitudes around art. 

Ronald Cyrille (1984- ) is a Dominican and Guadeloupean artist. He works in painting, drawing, and sculpture. Cyrille questions social and power dynamics through surreal landscapes. 

Ronald Moody (1900-1984) was a Jamaican-British sculptor. He is known for his wood carvings. Self-taught, he began sculpting with clay before moving to wood. His work is known for its stylisation, a form of figuration with symbolic or allegorical overtones. Moody received his dentistry degree King's College London in 1930.

Ronald Young is an American assemblage artist. He collects objects from his surroundings such as doors, broken tools, rusty metals, and bricks for his assemblages. He references Nkisi n Kondi, sculptures, power objects, and masks from African diasporic contexts. Young is not only creating a link from an African past to an American present, but his use of the materials is an attempt to document histories of vacancy and displacement in Saint Louis. In his work, doors function as a metaphor for access and opportunity. Young received his MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis in 2019. He also received his MA in Media Communications from Webster University in 1989 and his BA in Art Education K-12 from Clark/Atlanta University in 1980. 

Rosana Paulino (1967- ) is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist and curator. A major theme in her work is the position of Black women in Brazilian society. She works with drawing, embroidery, engraving, printmaking, collage, and sculpture. Pulling from archetypes, memory, familial legacies, and histories she delves into the memories of those who still suffer from legacies of racism.  Paulino received a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in Fine Arts from Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo in 1995 and 2011 respectively. 

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) was a Nigerian-British photographer. His work heavily featured themes of race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Fani-Kayode saw himself as a "triple outsider" via his nationality, race, and sexuality. Much of his work incorporates Yoruba imagery alongside European elements, complicating the idea of the Black body in the Western imagination. His work communicates a queer African perspective. The complex photographs explore desire, eroticism, and asserting one's place in the world.  Fani-Kayode received his MFA in Fine Arts & Photography at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY in 1983. He received his BA in Fine Arts and Economics from Georgetown University, Washington DC. 

Roy DeCarava (1919-2009) was an American photographer active during the Harlem Renaissance. He started his path as a photographer in the late 1940s, after working in painting and making prints for the posters division of the Works Progress Administration. Originally, DeCarava sought to use photography as a study for his paintings but soon fell in love with the medium itself. He sought to develop photography as a fine art form, outside of its potential social documentarian function. His oeuvre shows everyday life in Harlem strikingly and dramatically with moody lighting and contrasting tones.  DeCarava received his degree from The Cooper Union School of Art in 1940. He studied painting, architecture, and sculpture while there.   

ruby onyinyechi amanze (1982- ) is a Nigerian British-American artist noted for drawings and works on paper which focus on cultural hybridity or "post-colonial non-nationalism." In addition to being an artist, she has also worked as a teacher and curator. ruby onyinyechi amanze uses her work on paper to play with the spatial dimensions and tangibility of the human form, with animate and inanimate objects.  amanze received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. From 2012-2013, amanze was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Ruby Pearl Washington (1952-2018) was an American photojournalist. She was the first Black woman to become a staff photographer at The New York Times. 

Sable Elyse Smith (1986- ) is an American interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Her work highlights the ways that our culture overlooks violence, particularly carceral violence. For example, the prison visiting room is a place of interest for Smith. The violence of the police state has private and public implications, harming on a micro and macro scale.  She also explores the limits of the written word and the difficulties in communicating trauma.  Smith holds a BA in studio art and film from Oglethorpe  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oglethorpe_University]University and an MFA in Design & Technology from the Parsons New School for Design