Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (1987- ) is a Cuban performance artist and activist, known for his public performances that openly criticize the Cuban government and its policies. Since 2018 Alcántara has been arrested dozens of times for his performances in violation of Decree 349, a Cuban law requiring artists to obtain advance permission for public and private exhibitions and performances.⁠

Lulama Wolf (1993- ) is a South African painter. She brings the pre-colonial African experience to the forefront for her viewers. Wolf is influenced by smearing, scraping, and deep pigment techniques that were used in vernacular architecture to decorate African homes.

Lyle Ashton Harris (1965- ) is an American artist who works across photography, video, installation, and performance. Harris explores gender, sexuality, belonging, and cultural narratives. Queerness is a recurring theme in his work with Harris exploring both public and personal dimesons of sexuality. His portraiture and self-portraiture for example, explore drag and self-fashioning.  Harris received a BA from Wesleyan University with an in 1988. He received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1990.

Léonard Pongo (1988- ) is a Belgian-Congolese photographer who creates art, documentary, and photojournalist work. Léonard Pongo is a visual artist and photographer. Pongo views photography as a tool to reappropriate his Congolese culture. He is aware of photography's limitations in telling the "truth". He now focuses on exploring the diversity of the Congolese landscapes and offers images of the DRC imbued with magical beauty and mystical power.

Maganga Mwagogo (1997- ) is a Kenyan photographer. He works primarily as a fashion photographer. 

Maria Lídia Magliani⁠ (1946-2012) was a Brazilian painter, engraver, and illustrator.⁠ Magliani⁠'s was focused on addressing conditions of humanity and transcended topics of blackness and femininity. Much of her work contains female subjects. Ultimately, her work pulls from the country's cultural and political situations.  ⁠Magliani⁠ was one of the first Black women to graduate in Arts at the Universidade Federal do the Rio Grande do Sul in 1966. That same year she held her first solo exhibition at Galeria Espaço in Porto Alegre, then a new gallery in Rio Grande do Sul. In 1967 she obtained a postgraduate specializing in painting. 

Marielle Plaisir is a French-Carribbean multimedia artist who has been exploring the concepts of social domination  Beginning as a painter first, she currently considers herself an activist artist. For Plaisir power is not a natural fact, but a socially constructed one. Through her work, she deconstructs these conditions and imagines a world free of prejudice and imbalance. She sets out to create intense visual experiences for the audience.  Plaisir received a Master of Applied Arts from the University of Bordeaux III, France and a graduate degree in art and scenography from the Honors Advanced School of Fine Arts and Decorative Arts of Bordeaux, France. 

Marius Dansou (1984) is a Beninese sculptor making hairstyles from steel. Dansou incorporates the movements of braiders into his sculpture, creating new styles. He is inspired by West African hairstyles, street and hair salons, fashion trends, and even shapes from every objects for his work. 

Mark Bradford (1961- ) is an American painter known for his abstract painting and his multimedia pieces where he affixes paper to canvas. Bradford’s large works engage in mapping and interrogating social and political issues affecting marginalized communities. His work has been described as “social abstraction”, an understanding that the use of materials he uses precedes their artistic purpose. ⁠Many of the materials he uses are discarded from cities in Southern California.  Bradford received both his BFA and MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995 and 1997 respectively.