Celebrating Black Women Artists

We are all so tired right now.

If you are a fair-skinned human, like me, and you feel tired, distraught, and confused, well imagine how life feels for those whose skin is deep with melanin and just their very existence puts their lives in danger. These people are not just tired now, at this moment, they've been exhausted for hundreds of years.

Black lives are witness to collective ancestral fatigue wrought by racial inequality, economic disadvantage, and police/military brutality.

It’s Time

Now it's time that white people take the steps necessary to level the playing field by learning and listening and speaking up. Because when you stay silent, it's a tacit acceptance of the status quo. And I don't like the status quo. 

As a part of my way forward, I'm diving into art created by black American women who are still living. I'm not doing this as an exercise in self-help, no, the world needs less of that self-centered hyper-focus on perfecting our best selves, this project is to share the beauty and talent that is all around us. Talent and beauty that does not conform to white standards (we've had enough of that, don't you think?)—to witness art that reflects the human rainbow in all its richness and diversity.

I don’t have a large platform, but I’m doing what I can to stand up, speak out—and I’ve got a long way to go. I want to help dismantle systemic racism and the mechanisms that hold it in place and to do this I must understand much more than I do right now.

Amplify

Sharing works* by black women/womxn may seem like a small thing, but art can provoke and confront; in fact, good art does just that. And maybe someone reading this, or my Instagram posts, will BUY work from these or other African American artists. Let's support women, African American women this time. It's their turn.

*As much as I wanted to copy and paste ALL the art, I respect copyright, so I had to find an image (above, Helina Metaferia’s work) with Creative Commons license. Please go to the artists’ websites for the full panoply of visual amazingness.

Let’s meet the artists!

• Helina Metaferia | Instagram

Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, collage, and assemblage. Her work interrogates the politics of the body in space, particularly as it relates to notions of identity and citizenship. She is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow / Assistant Professor at Brown University and lives and works in New York City. (source: artist’s website)

• Nina Chanel Abney | Instagram

Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist, based in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. She is an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, pop culture, homophobia and politics in her work. (source: Wikipedia)

• Kay Douglas | Instagram

Kiayani “Kay” Douglas is an interdisciplinary artist and educator that uses her work to engage individuals in conversations rooted in race, history and privilege. She holds a BFA in Ceramics with a minor in Painting from Hartford Art School as well as an interdisciplinary MFA from the same school. Douglas was born and raised in Hartford, CT, and has hopes of continuing her deep ties with the community. (source: artist’s website)

• Mickaline Thomas | Instagram

Mickalene Thomas (lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) makes paintings, collages, photography, video, and installations that draw on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors in order to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women (and “feminine” spaces) are represented in art and popular culture. (source: artist’s website)   her website is gorgeous!

Okay, dear reader, that’s it from me for now. Let me know what you think of the featured artists and their work—and if you've got a favorite African American artist to share with me, please do!

—> Image: The Great African Migration (mural segment) by Helina Metafaria. Photo credit: "The Great African Migration" by art around is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0