Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) was an American painter and illustrator, active during the Harlem Renaissance. He might be most known for his Aspects of Negro Life mural series that traces Black people from an African past to a modern United States. He created illustrations for in Opportunity and The Crisis, two publications and was eventually invited to an art critic at The Crisis. Douglas was also a teacher, who influenced the development of countless students at Fisk University. In 1940, he accepted a full position in the art department and worked his way up to become chairman of the art department. He retired in 1966. Douglas received his BA in Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Abdoulaye Konaté (1953- ) is an Malian textile and sculptural artist. His woven tapestries have reference socio-political and environmental concerns. Konaté references West African practices of using textiles as a means of commemoration and communication.  Konaté studied painting at the Institut National des Arts de Bamako and then at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba.

Abdoulaye Ndoye (1951- ) is a Sengalese artist working across painting, printmaking, and ceramics. He is interested in invented script that resembles African writing systems and Arabic calligraphy. The writings possess meaning known solely by Ndoye. The process of creating is of particular importance to him.  Ndoye attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels from 1976 to 1980. 

Abe Odedina (1960- ) is a Nigerian painter. He works on board rather than canvas to invoke mural traditions. For Odedina, the material is deeply tied to the resulting work. Odedina's inspiration draws heavily from figurative and oral traditions of African art and ancient Greek and Yoruba mythologies. His bold colors create surreal interior scenes.

Abner Dubic (1944- ) is a Haitian painter. Many of his paintings depict daily life in Haiti. These scenes range from country life, farm work, and festivities.

Abraham Oghobase (1979- ) is a Nigerian artist working with photography. He explores history, culture, and environmentalism through his practice. Oghobase pushes photography to its limits, confronting and deconstructing traditional modes of image making.  Oghobase received his MFA in Visual Arts from York University, Toronto. 

Adama Adollah is a British photographer and filmmaker. She regularly contributes to various online platforms. Adollah creates striking portraits of her subjects, granting them dignity and grace through her eye.  Adollah received her BA in Commercial Photography from Arts University Bournemouth in 2015.

Adam Pendleton (1984- ) is an American conceptual printmaker, painter, and collage artist. Pendleton's work explores the connection between Blackness and aesthetics. Pendleton's paintings, which start on paper with expressive drips, marks, or phrases, and are then photographed and layered using a screenprinting process. 

Ademola Olugebefola (né Bedwick Lyola Thomas; b. October 2, 1941, Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands) is an American multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator, and cultural activist whose practice spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, mural-making, theatre set design, and graphic media. He was a founding member of the Black Arts Movement’s influential Weusi Artist Collective in Harlem during the 1960s, and his work draws on pan-African aesthetics, Afro-futurist vision, and community-based art practice. 

Adiskidan Ambaye (1977- ) is an Ethiopian sculptor and painter. She has a background in furniture design. This grounding informs her work as a sculptor. To Ambaye, sculpting and drawing are interrelated. Her sculptures are usually preceded by gestural sketches, influencing the basis for her three-dimensional compositions. Amabaye received her degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002. 

Adler Guerrier (born 1975, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a Haitian-born artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores place, identity, urban space, politics, and the poetics of everyday geography. Working across photography, drawing, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, Guerrier examines the social and psychological dimensions of landscape through assemblage, walking, recurring forms, and the recomposition of text and image.  Guerrier received a BFA from the University of Florida/New World School of the Arts in 2000. His work often engages diaspora, migration, Black life, architecture, and the built environment, using photographs, prints, sculptural interventions, and collaged works on paper to consider how race, class, and culture are embedded in cities and in the ways people move through them. Miami is a central site in his practice, functioning both as a lived geography and as a broader framework for thinking about belonging, urban change, and memory.  His work has been exhibited at Pérez Art Museum Miami, the California African American Museum, the Whitney Biennial, Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, and David Castillo Gallery, among other venues. His work is held in collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami, ICA Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Walker Art Center. Adler Guerrier lives and works in Miami, Florida.

a’driane nieves (1982- ) is an American multidisplinary artist working across painting, works on paper, and sonic pieces. She began painting as a therapeutic outlet. Abstract expressionist painting gave her the visual language to navigate the impacts of childhood abuse. Her work touches on Black bodies, experiences, traumas & triumphs, and healing.  nieves received her Associate of Arts from Camden County College in 2011. 

Adrian Octavius Walker (1985- ) is an American photographer and mixed media artist. His work seeks to expand the canon surrounding the nuances of Black life through tenderness and grit. Walker’s passion lies in using his practice to platform critical discourse around the imagination in black nostalgia. Adrian’s approach to still photography and sculpture is rooted in his commitment to archiving Black stories for the future. 

Aïda Muluneh (1974- ) is an Ethiopian photographer. Her conceptual compositions reflect her interests in climate justice and feminist perspectives. Her photographs are colorful and bold and incorporate traditional Ethiopian dress and face markings. Primary colors (red, blue, yellow) are often seen in her photographs and reference Ethiopian wall paintings. Muluneh is the founder of Addis Foto Fest (AFF), the first international photography festival in East Africa. She strives to cultivate opportunities for emerging African photographers. 

Aimé Mpane (born 1968, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a Congolese artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores colonialism, identity, place, memory, and the enduring relationship between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Belgium. Working across sculpture, installation, painting, mosaic-like wall hangings, and carved wood portraiture, Mpane examines postcolonial history and contemporary Congolese life through rough-hewn surfaces, layered construction, and the repeated use of wood as a materially and symbolically charged medium.  Mpane studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa, where he trained in sculpture. His work often engages colonial history, race, public memory, and Congolese self-representation, using wood carving, painted surfaces, portraiture, and a traditional adze to consider how identity is formed across personal experience and larger historical structures. Many of his sculptures and installations address the aftermath of Belgian colonialism, while his portraits of people encountered in Kinshasa foreground the social and emotional texture of contemporary urban life.  His work has been exhibited at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Liverpool Biennial, the University of Wyoming Art Museum, Haines Gallery, and the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. He received the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Prize from The Phillips Collection, and his work is held in collections including The Phillips Collection and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Aimé Mpane lives and works between Brussels and Kinshasa.

Aina Onabolu (b. September 13, 1882, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria – d. 1963, Lagos) was a pioneering Nigerian painter and educator, known as one of the founders of modern Nigerian art. Self-taught from a young age, he mastered European academic realism and became the first to introduce formal art training and realistic portraiture into Nigerian schools. His work helped shift perceptions of African artistic capacity during the colonial era and had lasting influence on Nigerian art education and modernism. 

Aisha Tandiwe Bell is an American artist interested in the idea of "traps", fragmentation, and hyphenated identities through sculpture performance, video, sound, drawing, and installation. The process of mythmaking and ritual in her work call into question the categories of race, class, and sex and the societal ideas around them. Bell received her MS in Art and Design Education with a focus in Painting from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1999 and an MFA in Ceramics from Hunter College, New York, NY in 2008. She received her BFA in Painting and Art Education from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1998. 

Ajamu X (1963- ) is a British artist, curator, archivist, and activist. His photographic practice explores Black male and queer sensuality. Many of his subjects are LGBTQ folks who are out socially. X's work is a celebration of queer vibrancy and intimacy. 

Akinola Taoheed Olaitan (2000- ) is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist. Many of his works feature faces against floral backgrounds.  Olaitan is currently pursuing a degree in Art Education at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. 

Alanna Fields (1990- ) is an American mixed media artist preserving and examining queer history archival research. Her work includes text, painting, and photography to highlight the ways that queer individuals and histories have been hidden. Fields received her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. She holds a BA in Literature from Trinity Washington University. 

Alassane Koné (1995- ) is a Malian sculptor. Thread is a central part of his practice, as it is easier to manipulate than metal. Pulling from other disciplines, such as painting and drawing, Koné creates figurative threaded portraits.

Alexandra Antoine is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary visual artist and cultural apprentice whose multidisciplinary practice explores Haitian heritage, portraiture, food, farming, physical labor, and traditional artistic practices across the African diaspora. Working across collage, portraiture, mural-making, social practice, food-based work, and education, Antoine examines memory, lineage, healing, and community through storytelling, visual design, and forms of making rooted in both domestic and collective life.  Antoine earned an Associate’s degree in Fine Arts from Valencia Community College in 2010 and a BFA with an emphasis in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Her work often engages family archive, Haitian culture, apprenticeship, portraiture, and the labor of cultivation, using collage, murals, photography, food, and community-based practice to consider identity, cultural transmission, and the everyday processes through which knowledge is shared across generations. Sources also note her time spent in Léogâne, Haiti, the birthplace of her parents, as an important foundation for her visual language.  Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at boundary, Chicago Art Department, and Rootwork Gallery in Chicago, and she has participated in projects with The Heirloom Collards Project, Envisioning Justice, and artist residency and teaching initiatives in the Chicago area. In 2022, she was named Artist in Residence at Lake Forest College. Alexandra Antoine lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 

Alexandre Arrechea (1970- ) is a Cuban multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans large-scale installations, sculptures, watercolor drawings, and videos. He is one of the founding members of the Cuban collective, Los Carpinteros, active between 1991 and 2003. The group toyed with the idea of dichotomies and often reimagined everyday objects into an imperfect, new form.  As a solo artist, he focuses on systems of power and surveillance. The connections between architecture, history, memory, and the Black body are all of interest to him. His public sculpture invites audience interaction.  Arrechea received a BFA from Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana in 1994. 

Alfred Amadu Conteh (1975- ) is an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and mixed-media artist. His works explore the personal identity from multiple perspectives. He treats the surface of his work with materials such as battery acid, rust, and soil to reflect the lives of his sitters, many of whom do not have access to the "American dream". He critiques the material conditions of Black Americans who have been systematically neglected. He received his BFA from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. He received his MFA from Georgia Southern University. 

Alick Phiri (b. 1948, Zambia) is a pioneering Zambian photographer whose work offers rare, intimate views of everyday life, identity, and community in Lusaka from the 1960s through the 1990s. Trained at Photo Art Studios in Lusaka under mentor Prabhubhai Patel, Phiri was among the few black photographers active during a period when photographic access was heavily restricted in Zambia. He is celebrated for capturing ordinary moments—portraits, street scenes, family gatherings—with dignity, sincerity, and historical weight. His archive is now being rediscovered and appreciated in Zambia and internationally, helping to reshape how visual memory and national identity are understood. 

Alioune Diagne (1985- ) is a Senegalese painter working in what he calls, a “figuro-abstro” style. He is inspired by calligraphy and uses that as his starting place. When viewing his work closely, one sees signs and shapes. Only when taking a step back does the full picture come into focus. Diagne's painting show a glimpse of daily life in Senegal, with scenes of fishermen, women at markets, and migrants. He also highlights ongoing wealth and resource disparity. 

Alma Thomas (1891-1978) was an American painter. Her colorful, abstract, mosaic-like paintings reference nature and art history. She was inspired by pointillism, the Washington Color School, and her mentor Loïs Mailou Jones to push herself. Her compositions reflect a deep belief in the power of color and its connection to beauty and goodness. Thomas had her first exhibition at Howard University at the age of 75.  In 1924 she became the first graduate of Howard University's art department.

Althea McNish (1924-2020) was a Trinidadian-British textile designer. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, she assisted with her mother's dressmaking business as a child. She was a member of the Trinidad Arts Society and had her first exhibition at the age of 16. Relocating to London with her family in the 1950s, she attended art schools and was encouraged by mentors to apply her skills to textiles. Her style is known for its vibrant, contrasting colors and tropical flora and fauna. She was one of the first Afro-Caribbean designers to reach international acclaim.  McNish took courses at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts, the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and the Royal College of Art. 

Althea Murphy-Price is an American printmaker and sculpture. She uses lithography, stenciling methods, photography and 3D printing. Her work considers the centrality of hair in fashioning identity.  Murphy-Price received a B.A. from Spelman College, an M.A. from Purdue University and an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.  

Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Puerto Rican artist working across installation, performance, video, sculpture, and works on paper. Flowers uses materials that have been associated as feminine or have oversaturated girl-like substances or colors. This allows her to assign a more positive association to materials that may be overlooked. Flowers is interested in fantasy, as a system of resistance and future-building emerges in her work. Embedded in the work is a sense of permeability that can not be categorized, a space with queer people freely and joyfully exist.   Flowers received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2014. 

Ameh Egwuh (1996- ) is a painter who participated in the inaugural edition of Rele Arts Foundation’s Young Contemporaries Bootcamp in 2019 and was selected in 2020 as part of Rele Arts Foundation Young Contemporaries. Egwuh studied Fine and Applied Art at Delta State University, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria.  

Amel Bashier (1981- ) is a Sudanese artist whose work includes drawings and paintings. Taking inspiration from themes such as peace, heritage, and feminine strength, she contextualizes the female figure in modern struggles for equality. Bashier's drawings utilize a precise and meticulous pointillistic method. Bashier received a Bachelor of Interior Design at the Sudan University of Science and Technology. 

Amna Elhassan (1988- ) is a Sudanese printmaker, painter, and installation artist. Elhassan's work focuses on the experiences of women. Deeply affected by her country's political and social unrest, her paintings and installations ensure women's challenges and triumphs are not lost. The vibrant and fantastical color palette reflects her love for painting and experimentation with techniques.   Elhassan received her Bachelor of Science from Khartoum University, Khartoum in 2010 and her Master di II Livello in Architecture per la Salute from Sapienza from the University of Rome, Italy in 2013. 

Amoako Boafo (1984- ) is a Ghanaian painter artist whose works center people of the African diaspora underrepresented in contemporary art. He utilizes bold colors and patterns to create self-portraits and portraits of friends and family that he admires. Boafo uses his figures to manipulate the pigments, creating a unique textural and visual experience.  Boafo graduated from the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, Ghana in 2008. He then attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, for his MFA. 

Amy Sherald (1973- ) is an American painter. Sherald is most known for her portrait painting of former First Lady Michelle Obama. Through her portraits, Sherald explores how people construct and perform their identities in response to political, social, and cultural expectations. Her colorful, contrasting canvases demand the viewer to see the subject. She uses a grey scale as a skin tone palette to challenge the idea of color as race. Sherald received her bachelor’s degree in 1997 at Clark Atlanta University. She received her MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. In 2021 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. 

Ana Silva (1979- ) is an Angolan artist working with painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. She uses canvas, wood, metal, acrylic, and fabric, working outside defined perimeters. Silva's aesthetic is a story gently suggested behind the laces and nets where female figures revealed themselves. She is working on three main series: Agua, Child, and Grandmother. Agua highlights the difficulty of accessing clean water in Angola, Child speaks to the disruption of childhood due to the responsibility of having to fetch water, and Grandmother is a reflection on the passage of life of Silva's grandmother and daughter.  Silva studied at the ArCo Higher School in Lisbon. 

Andre Pierre (1916-2005) was a Haitian painter. His paintings depict Vodoun religious ceremonies and deities. He is considered a master painter working in a modernist Haitian style.

Anthony Renelle Reed II (1987- ) is an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. His portraits reflect a desire to represent the vibrancy of Black American culture and the city of Miami. He wants to uplift his community. Reed's work utilizes colorful, thick brushstrokes that frame his subjects confidently and regally.  Reed received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art with an emphasis in Sequential Art from Savannah College of Art & Design in 2015. 

Antonio Obá (1983- ) is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, photography, installations, video, and performance art. His work focuses on the body, Brazilian iconography, and significant events related to Black liberation struggles. 

Anya Paintsil (1993- ) is a Welsh-Ghanaian artist working primarily with textiles. Combining traditional hand rug-making techniques with afro hair styling methods, Anya's practice is largely autobiographical, taking inspiration from her childhood in North Wales, family stories, and Welsh and Ghanaian mythologies. She also explores identity and gendered labor.  Paintstil received a BA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art in 2020. 

April Bey (1987- ) is a Bahamian-American multidisciplinary artist. Her interdisciplinary work touches on subjects such as a critique of American and Bahamian culture, feminism, generational theory, social media, post-colonialism Speculative futurism/surrealism and Blerd (Black nerd) culture. Bey’s two-dimensional mixed media works and installations incorporate fur, glitter, vinyl and woven textiles, to craft icons around the images of real-life figures from her community. Bey received her BFA degree in drawing in 2009 from Ball State University, and an MFA in painting in 2014 at California State University, Northridge. 

April Harrison is an American illustrator and mixed media artist. Harrison's work is a testament to the strength of faith, family, and friendship. Harrison's mixed media work features elongated forms against palettes of blues, greens, reds, and yellows. Her collage process uses found materials that add a physical dimension to her work and a quilt-like quality. This cements her practice within the tradition of African-American artistic traditions. 

Arcmanoro Niles (1989- ) is an American painter known for using bright, vibrant colors to illustrate different facets of everyday life. These mundane scenes point to a complicated interior that contemplates loneliness and life overall. Niles is incredibly interested in color. He layers oranges, pinks, purples, blues, and greens to create vibrant colors and rich undertones for his subjects. He references Italian and Dutch baroque, history painting, Color Field painting, and ancient Egyptian sculpture in his work.  Niles received a BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2015.

Arthur Jafa (1960- ) is an American film artist and cinematographer. His work explores the realities, constructions, and influence of Blackness in contemporary culture in the United States and abroad. He debuted as a cinematographer with Daughters of the Dust along with director Julie Dash and production designer Kerry James Marshall.  Jafa studied film and architecture at Howard University in 1983 before relocating to Los Angeles, California. 

Asser Saint-Val (born 1974, in Port-de-Paix, Haiti) is a Haitian-American artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores identity, spirituality, neuromelanin, and the subconscious through immersive, sensorial forms. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, design, and occasionally music, Saint-Val examines the psychic and symbolic dimensions of Blackness through surreal visual language, interactive environments, and materially layered compositions.  Saint-Val earned BFAs in painting and graphic design from the New World School of the Arts and the University of Florida in 2004. His work often engages spirituality, magic, bodily presence, and self-construction, using painting, sculptural form, installation, and public art to consider how identity is experienced beyond the visible surface. Institutional and artist sources consistently describe his practice as rooted in experiential and interactive structures that invite viewers into psychological and symbolic space.  His work has been exhibited throughout South Florida, New York, Washington, D.C., and across the Caribbean, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Grenada, and Aruba. He has also developed public art projects in Miami-Dade County and is represented in collections including the Rubell Family Collection and Art in Public Places. Asser Saint-Val lives and works in Miami, Florida. 

Augusta Savage (1892-1962) was an American sculptor. She was active during the Harlem Renaissance, following her relocation from Florida to New York. She created small figurative portraits, some modeled on friends and family. In the late 1930s, she became the director of the Harlem Community Arts Center, a community artist organization that offered art classes for all ages. She struggled to raise money to cast her works in bronze, so many of her remaining works are plaster, painted to look like bronze busts.  Savage received her degree from Cooper Union in 1923. 

Awol Erizku (1988- ) is an Ethiopian-born American contemporary multidisplinary artist working across painting, photography, sculpture, and film. Much of his work references spirituality, art history, and hip-hop. He works from a self-developed, "Afro-esoteric” that seeks to bridge the gap between African and African American visual lexicons.  Erizku received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2010 and his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2014. 

Barbara Chase-Riboud (1939- ) is a French-American sculptor and artist working on paper. Born in Philadelphia, she traveled to Egypt and Greece, and her experiences with ancient sculptural forms left a large impact on her practice. Her distinct style involves bronze forms cast in the lost wax method with flowing tendrils and tresses of silk and other fabrics.  Chase-Riboud received a BFA from the Tyler School at Temple University in 1956 and was awarded a John Hay Whitney Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1957.  In 1960, she received her MFA at Yale University School of Design and Architecture.

Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) was an American painter and photographer. He began his career as a painter before taking up photography. These early paintings include landscapes and still lifes. He is known for unflinching, direct, large oil portraits of Black people. Overall, his work is known for the attitude and style that comes off the subjects.  Hendricks graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1967. He received both his BFA and MFA from Yale University. 

Barthélémy Toguo (1967- ) is a Cameroonian painter and a visual and performing artist. He works across various mediums including photographs, prints, sculptures, videos, and installations. Toguo's works explore migration and travel. He is interested in concepts around language, documentation, and borders. Much of his work connects humans with the natural world through a hopeful lens.   Between 1989 and 1993 he studied art, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Grenoble, France, and at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Germany.