Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Tiffanie Delune (1988- ) is a Belgo-Congolese French artist working across painting, textiles, and works on paper. Through a love of storytelling, she hopes to evoke emotions through intuitive swirling forms. Her work is embedded with symbols of femininity and spirituality. 

Tiffany Alfonseca (1994- ) is a Dominican-American mixed-media artist and contemporary painter based in the Bronx, New York. Her work weaves together beauty, diversity, and multilingualism to highlight the diversity of Afro-Latine and Black experiences. She is interested in the concept of "double consciousness" coined by W.E.B. DuBois and its relation to the experience of Black and Brown people. The bright and vibrant, pink, blue, and green palate she often uses in her work references her childhood memories in the Dominican Republic but also the Black and Brown joy she hopes to capture.  Alfonseca received her BFA at the School of Visual Arts in 2020.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden (1981- ) is an American multidisciplinary artist working across film, sculpture, sound, and performance. Her work explores and critiques works on gender, sexuality, and race. More recently, her practice has expanded to explore Black interiority, biomythography, and queer poetics.  She received her bachelor's from Clark Atlanta Universit in 2002. 

Tomashi Jackson (1980- ) is an American multimedia artist working across printmaking, sculpture, photography, video, fibrework, and performance. Jackson's assemblages are entrenched in a deep research process centered around systemic abuse, disenfranchisement, and displacement of communities of color. She connects histories and archives with to present moment.  Jackson received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2010. She received her MS from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in 2012 and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2016.

Toyin Ojih Odutola (1985- ) is a Nigerian-American artist who creates works on paper. She is interested in skin texture and has reduced her materials to the basics, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels, and charcoal. This results in a very distinctive mark-making style. Developed over months, narratives that emerge through a series resemble a chapter book. Recently, she has created works around landscapes, architecture, and domestic interiors.  Odutola received a BA from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. 

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones (1992- ) works across painting, drawing, and printmaking to explore his Nigerian Yoruba background. With a focus on contemporary perceptions of the Black body, Adeniyi-Jones depicts figures captured mid-dance as a tool to illuminate the significance of body language and dance in a continent with numerous spoken languages. Androgynous forms, deities, and animals populate his work in a celebration and acknowledgment of African identity.  Adeniyi-Jones received his BFA from The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford in 2014 and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2017. 

Turiya Magadlela (1978- ) is a South African artist using textiles with charged stories to create work. Her materials range from pantyhose to correctional service uniforms. Magadlela's work focuses on her experiences with womanhood and motherhood and the loaded history of Black South Africans. Magadlela received her Certificate in Fine Arts from Funda Community College in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1998. She received her National Diploma of Fine Arts from University of Johannesburg, South Africa in 2001. 

Tyler Mitchell (1995- ) is an American, Atlanta born and based fine art and commercial photographer. Much of his fine photography is focused on Black leisure and joy. He seeks to create a "Black utopic vision" with an emphasis on Black enjoying and existing outdoors. His bold colors are moody and contemplative. In 2018 Mitchell was commissioned to photograph Beyoncé for the Vogue September edition. In doing so, he became one of the youngest photographers and the first Black photographer to photograph a Vogue cover.