Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Nontsikelelo Mutiti (1982- ) is a Zimbabwean visual artist and educator. She takes a conceptual view of publishing, archiving practices, and institution building. She approaches books as a time-based medium that physically engages the viewer. As her educator, she is interested in systems of communication and learning that pre-date colonial frameworks of the written word in Zimbabwe.  Mutiti holds a diploma in Multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in Graphic Design. 

Nyancho NwaNri is a Gambian-Nigerian photographer. NwaNri's work focuses on the environment, social issues, languages, and history.

Olyseye works across sculpture and photography. He is deeply interested in the Black experience. Oluseye coined the term "diasporic debris", to describe the artifacts, discarded materials and found objects he collects during his travels. He believes that Blackness is something unfixed and ever-changing and so much must his practice, blending the contemporary and historical.  Oluseye received a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Masters of Science in Entrepreneurship from Bayes Business School, University of London, UK. 

Omar Victor Diop (1980-) is a Senegalese photographer. Diop is both a fashion and fine arts photographer. At one point in time, he produced seventy percent of Dakar's commercial advertising. His fine art photographs meld photography with other art forms, including textile design, fashion design, and creative writing. Serving as subject, his portraits explore historical events or model him after African leaders. Additionally, environmentally is explore through his work.  graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris in France. 

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. 

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    

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.