Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, (b.1980-) an artist whose work encompasses drawing, painting, installation, and animation. Her work alludes to mythology, geology and theories on the nature of the universe. Sunstrum’s works include narrative landscapes that appear simultaneously futuristic and ancient.

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. 

Papa Ibra Tall (1935-2015) was a weaver, painter, and illustrator. Known for his role in the Ecole de Dakar, an art school/movement based in Senegal, his works feature bright colors and abstracted shapes. Taking the form of large scale installations, much of his art was created with the intention of transforming space.

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    

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982) is a Californian photographer who integrates his professional and personal life into his work to create raw images of the human form. Sepuya's photos include friends, lovers, and models and showcase intimate depictions of humans in "creative, desirous exchanges. His photos have been exhibited in solo shows and museums nationwide.

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. 

Philemona Williamson (born 1951, New York, NY) is an American painter known for her psychologically rich figurative works that explore memory, girlhood, identity, and the complexities of coming-of-age. Her paintings feature ambiguous narratives that center young people—often girls and adolescents—caught in moments of emotional transition. With vibrant color, symbolic objects, and fluid dreamlike compositions, Williamson examines interpersonal relationships, cultural heritage, and the inner worlds of youth. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Montclair Art Museum, Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Newark Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the June Kelly Gallery. Williamson received her BA from Bennington College and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She lives and works in New York.

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. 

Portia Zvavahera (born March 22, 1985, in Harare, Zimbabwe) is a Zimbabwean artist whose painting practice explores dreams, spirituality, womanhood, vulnerability, and emotional transformation. Working across painting and print-based processes, Zvavahera examines interior life, faith, fear, and protection through layered surfaces, repeated motifs, and dense compositions that merge figuration with pattern and abstraction. Her paintings often draw from dreams, everyday rituals, Pentecostal belief, and Shona visual culture to create psychologically charged scenes that move between intimacy and the uncanny.  Zvavahera studied at the BAT Visual Arts Studio under the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 2003 to 2004 and received a diploma in visual arts from Harare Polytechnic in 2006. Her work often engages memory, dream states, spirituality, and cultural inheritance, using painting, printmaking processes, and textile-like patterning to consider care, anxiety, embodiment, and the porous boundary between the seen and unseen. She has described dreams as a key source for her imagery, and institutions frequently note the way her work bridges Indigenous Shona references with Christian and personal symbolism.  Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, David Zwirner, Fruitmarket, and Zeitz MOCAA, among other international venues. She has received the FNB Art Prize and the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts. Portia Zvavahera lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Precious Okoyomon (born 1993, London, United Kingdom) is a Nigerian-American artist and poet whose multidisciplinary practice explores ecology, colonial histories, migration, and the entanglements between human and nonhuman life. Working across installation, sculpture, poetry, and performance, Okoyomon creates immersive environments that incorporate living materials such as plants, soil, insects, and organic matter, foregrounding processes of growth, decay, and transformation. Their work often centers invasive plant species—such as kudzu—as metaphors for colonial expansion, displacement, and resilience, examining how landscapes are shaped by histories of violence and survival. By cultivating these materials within gallery spaces, Okoyomon constructs ecosystems that challenge distinctions between nature and culture, control and wildness. Their installations frequently evolve over time, allowing unpredictability and ecological processes to shape the work’s form and meaning. Alongside their visual practice, Okoyomon is an acclaimed poet, and language plays a central role in their work. Their texts and installations engage themes of love, grief, spirituality, and belonging, often drawing from diasporic experience and queer identity. By combining literary, ecological, and sculptural approaches, Okoyomon expands contemporary art discourse to include care, relationality, and interdependence across species. Okoyomon has exhibited widely at major international institutions and biennials and was included in the 59th Venice Biennale. Their work is held in significant public and private collections. They live and work in New York.

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.

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. 

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. 

Qualesha Wood (b. 1996) is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist whose work explores Black womanhood, memory, and the emotional landscapes carried within the body. Working across photography, video, performance, and mixed media, Wood uses gesture, storytelling, and intimate portraiture to examine themes of vulnerability, healing, and visibility. Her practice often engages familial histories and the quiet rituals of daily life, creating images that are tender, atmospheric, and rooted in lived experience. Through her visual language, Wood reframes Black interiority as a site of power, softness, and complexity, inviting viewers to witness narratives that are often overlooked or unspoken.

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. 

Rahim Fortune (born 1994, in Austin, Texas) is an American artist whose photographic practice explores American identity, migration, family history, landscape, and the intertwined experiences of Black and Indigenous communities in the American South. Working across photography, portraiture, landscape, and photobook-making, Fortune examines memory, resettlement, grief, and cultural continuity through intimate documentary observation, poetic sequencing, and images that move between personal history and broader social narrative.  Fortune is a self-taught photographer. His work often engages family archive, social history, regional landscape, and community memory, using black-and-white and color photography, serial image-making, and the photobook form to consider loss, care, belonging, and the ways history is carried through people and place. His projects frequently focus on Texas, Oklahoma, and the wider American South, foregrounding the emotional and historical textures of everyday life rather than spectacle.  His work has been exhibited at the California African American Museum, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the University of Texas, and it is held in collections including the High Museum of Art, LUMA Arles, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He received the Rencontres d’Arles Louis Roederer Discovery Award in 2022, and his book I Can’t Stand to See You Cry was nominated for the Paris Photo–Aperture Photobook of the Year award. Rahim Fortune lives and works between Austin, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York.

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. 

Ravelle Pillay (b.1993, Durban, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based painter whose practice mines the haunting reverberations of history, extracted from archival photography and inherited memories. As a starting point, the artist collects family photographs stretching back generations alongside a broader archive of portrait and landscape photography as imperfect portals into the past. The process of meeting the canvas with unstable imagery is underpinned by an inevitable grappling with the legacies of colonialism and migration. 

Raymond Saunders (born 1934, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American painter whose work blends abstraction, figuration, and assemblage to explore race, representation, and the expansive possibilities of painting. Based in California, Saunders works across painting, drawing, and mixed media, creating layered compositions that incorporate found materials, text, and imagery drawn from both everyday life and art history. His practice resists categorization, embracing complexity and contradiction as central to its form and meaning. Saunders first gained prominence in the 1960s and is widely known for his influential 1967 pamphlet Black Is a Color, in which he challenged the expectation that Black artists should be confined to explicitly political or representational modes. Instead, he argued for artistic freedom and the right to engage abstraction, conceptualism, and personal expression without limitation. This philosophy continues to inform his work, which moves fluidly between visual languages and references. His paintings often feature chalkboard-like surfaces, gestural marks, photographic images, and handwritten text, creating dense visual fields that invite close looking and interpretation. By layering cultural references, symbols, and fragments of language, Saunders constructs works that function as both visual and intellectual spaces, where meaning is continuously negotiated rather than fixed. Saunders has exhibited widely throughout his career and is recognized as a key figure in postwar American art. His work is held in major institutional collections, and he continues to live and work in California.

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. 

Renee Cox (b. 1960 ) is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist, and curator. Specializing in digital portraiture and film, well known for artwork, where she is dressed in the colorful costume of a black superhero named Raje. "These slick, color-laden images, their large format, and Cox's own powerfully beautiful figure heighten the visual impact of the work, making Cox's politics clear and engaging."

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. 

Renee Stout (born 1958) is an American sculptor and contemporary artist known for assemblage artworks dealing with her personal history and African-American heritage. Born in Kansas, raised in Pittsburgh, living in Washington, D.C., and connected through her art to New Orleans, her art reflects this interest in African diasporic culture throughout the United States. Stout was the first American artist to exhibit in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art.

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.

Rhea Leonard (born 1991, South Florida) is a Miami-based African American multidisciplinary artist whose work spans drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and textile-based mark-making. Her practice centers the Black body, memory, trauma, and healing, using figurative imagery and material experimentation to explore how systemic violence, personal experience, and cultural history shape identity. Leonard often expands the language of drawing through sewn, beaded, and tactile surfaces that embody care, vulnerability, and resilience. She holds a BFA from New World School of the Arts and an MFA from Florida International University, and is currently a resident artist at Bakehouse Art Complex.

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.

Richmond Barthé, a renowned sculptor, who made significant contributions as a trailblazer within the Black LGBTQ community. Barthé fearlessly embraced his sexuality and challenged societal taboos through his art, inspiring generations to embrace their identities. His groundbreaking work paved the way for greater acceptance of Black LGBTQ artists, leaving an enduring legacy of representation and empowerment.

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. 

Rodney McMillian (1969-) is an artist from South Carolina who is known for his large-scale installation art. He aims to address the relationships between history and contemporary culture through an art historical lens. His works take the form of sculptures, paintings, videos, and more. 

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.