Voices of the Diaspora: The Artisans Behind the Canvas

Esther Ofosu (1987- ) is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist who works and sculpture and painting Her work evokes emotions drawn from issues happening in and around her environment. In her current work, she puts thousands of rattan shavings together, plaits them into thick heavy strands, dyed, coiled, and converts into fluffy circular mats, objects, and installations. By going through these processes, she explores and expands the ideologies of craft labor into various dimensions to include support and the body. Ofosu received her B.Ed. Art from the University of Education, Winneba and earned her Master of Fine Art from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

Evelyn Adams is a Ghanaian-American artist who works across painting, drawing, ceramics, and performance. Her works celebrate the beauty of Black women on a monumental scale. The women in her works are sourced from photographs from personal archives of my family, close acquaintances, and myself, as well as historical sources. Through her work, she affirms the inherent humanity of Black women. She also includes textiles and traditional Ghanaian clothing to reflect the country's rich textile history.  Adams received her MFA in  Studio Art and Art History from the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2023. She received her BFA in Studio Art and Art History from Long Island University-Post, School Of Visual And Performing Art in 2015. 

Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) was an American painter, mixed-media sculptor and textile artist. She is known for her story quilts depicting various aspects of Black life. These quilts are often open ended and use surreal settings. Ringgold sought to create to work in a medium that was uniquely her own to fully embody a celebration of Black visual culture. Her early paintings use flat colors and figures, characterized by by heavy line work. Since the 1960s she has been an advocate for the inclusion of Black people and women in museum spaces. 

Fatric Bewong is a Ghanaian interdisciplinary artist. Bewong sculpts with reused materials and sound improvisation to transform them into formal objects. Through photographs and videos of herself dressed under the guise of Mother Earth, she re-contextualizes traditional Ghanaian proverbs to open up dialogues and discussions on class systems, labor, love, healing, self-care, and self-actualization. Bewong received a BFA from  Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in 2006. She received her  MFA degree from the University of Hartford in 2019.

Favour Jonathan (1996- ) is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, painting, photography, and installation. She creates work that explores femininity and identity from her experience of living in London. 

Folashade Thomas-Fahm (1933- ) is a Nigerian fashion designer. She is regarded as Nigeria's first modern fashion designer and was the first fashion designer to open a fashion boutique in Nigeria. After returning to Nigeria in 1960 from her studies in London, she opened a factory and the first fashion boutique in Nigeria under the name, Maison Shade (later becoming Shade's Boutique). She used traditional Nigerian fabrics (aso oke, adire, akwete, and okene) in her designs.  Thomas-Fahm studied fashion at St. Martins College of Art and Design, beginning in 1953. She became a qualified fashion designer in 1959, becoming the first Nigerian woman to acquire such qualifications. 

Franz Caba (1991- ) is a self-taught Dominican artist whose work includes drawings, installations, and tattooing. Cabo's work explores the body, vulnerability, and identity. Some of his work seeks to extract the relationship between the body and the Caribbean as "paradise". Caba received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the Autonomous University of San Domingo in 2017. He studied for a  master's degree from the same institution.  

Fred Eversley (1941- ) is an American sculptor born in New York, greatly influenced the rise of contemporary art in California and is known for his abstract sculptures. He began his career as an engineer who collaborated for NASA and other large aerospace companies and changed his career path after he developed an interest in the Parabola–a type of curve such as that made by an object thrown up in the air and falling to the ground in a different place. It also is the only shape that concentrates all forms of energy to a single focal point. His artwork explores energy, light, and space. Eversley works with resin, plastic, and polyester challenging materials. Once in large cylinders, he transforms them as he experiments with Light and Color and seeks to uncover the hidden realities of the human mind.  Parabolic Flight was one of the first Art in Public Places (APP) works in Miami-Dade County and the very first public art commission by the APP Trust for MIA. The work was commissioned in 1980. This work can be seen at the entrance to the Miami International Airport. Eversley received a BS in electrical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. 

Frederick Bamfo is a Ghanaian artist working across architectural landscapes and textiles. His work questions issues around spatiality, material history, constructed sociocultural hierarchies, borders, migration, and geopolitics of the 21st-century globalization climate. Bamfo is a PhD candidate in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He earned his MFA in 2014 and his BFA from the same institution in 2010. He also studied Fashion Design and Textiles from Kumasi Technical University.