Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Mark Delmont (1990- ) is a Haitian-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist. He creates textile portraits inspired by the work of Jacob Lawerence, Octavia Butler, and Ernie Barnes. These "fiber sculptures" incorporate chicken" wire, steel, fiber, and wood. Delmont makes work about the "catacombs" that are Miami and its residents. Reshaping perceptions, he wants to assist Black and Brown people to navigate the world more confidently. 

Mark Thomas Gibson (1980- ) is an American visual artist working in painting, print, ink, and watercolor. Through the medium of comics, he explores Black representation. He believes this can function as a tool for social justice. Gibson arrives at a satirical, dystopian America where every viewer can also be a potential character.  Thomas Gibson received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013. 

Mary Ann Carroll (1940-2019) was an American landscape painter. She was part of the group, "The Highwaymen" dubbed so because they sold their work out of the trunks of their cars along the eastern coastal roads In Florida. They also sold their door-to-door and to hotels from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. 

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (1981- ) is an advocate, visual artist, and educator from Philadelphia. Her work is highly multidisciplinary, employing the use of mediums including performance, film, music, and more. Baxter's works consider themes including gender, justice, identity, and the industrial prison complex. Pulling heavily from her own experiences, her works focuses on the challenges women of color face in the system.  She is a co-founder of the Dignity Act Now Collective. Consisting of activists and artists directly impacted by incarceration they advocate for legal reform. 

Mary Sibande (1982- ) is a South African visual artist whose work is highly multidisciplinary, employing mediums including sculpture, painting, photography, and more. Sibande's art is informed by themes including race, gender, and identity. A large aspect of her work is exploring the repercussions of apartheid and its effect on her and her family. She does this through her sculptural alter ego, Sophie.  Through Sophie, Sibande is able to rewrite her family's history, paying close attention to domestic service.  Sibande received a degree in Fine Arts at The University of Johannesburg in 2007. 

Masa Zodros is a digital photographer from La Guadeloupe in the Antilles. Zodros seeks to create a landscape where Black men and women exist free from trauma. Her photographs are personalities and kémites characters. She incorporates wax fabric and African masks. This connects her subjects to an African present allowing her to present where Black people are joyful and regal.  She received a BFA from Les Beaux-Arts de Marseille. 

Meschac Gaba (1961- ) is a Beninese conceptual artist. His installations of everyday objects whimsically juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and commerce. His work addresses and overturns codes of national and shared identity, along with their inherent value, by blurring the political, the artistic, and the everyday. 

Michael Armitage (1984- ) is a Kenyan-British painter. Armitage paints with oil on Lubugo, a traditional bark cloth from Uganda, an act complicating the location and production of his work. His work centers East African animals, landscapes, and events. With a flattened perspective, his work flows between figuration and abstraction.  In May 2022, the Royal Mint announced that he would design a new £1 coin for the United Kingdom, to be issued in 2023. Armitage received his BA from the Slade School of Art in 2007. He received his Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2010. 

Michaela Yearwood-Dan (1994- ) is a British artist working across painting, works on paper, ceramics, and site-specific mural and sound installations. Her work focuses on Blackness, queerness, femininity, healing rituals, and carnival culture. Her large paintings and smaller, intimate ceramics embody an abstract visual language with lush and bright colors. She often engages colors and materials for their symbolic associations—from the hints of the oranges, pinks, purples, and blues of the lesbian and bisexual pride flags mingling through the compositions to the queer histories. Within the paintings, she writes lines of text—pulled from song lyrics, poetry, or even her diary. Yearwood-Dan received her BA in Fine Art Painting from the University of Brighton in 2016. 

Mickalene Thomas (1971- ) is an American artist who creates paintings, collages, photographs, videos, and installations. Her pieces reimagine the Black female nude as a subject of desire and center the female gaze. Her complex portraits and landscapes explore gender and sexuality and how pop culture influences how women are represented. Her collages with glitter and rhinestones reconstruct ideas around beauty and sexuality and open conversations around femininity and desire. ⁠ Thomas received a BFA from the Pratt Institute in 2000 and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2002.