10 black artists you should know

By CW Contributor on 2/6/2020

Now, more than ever, the many voices of black experience need to be heard. And art institutions are increasingly recognising the indomitable influence of black artists with large scale exhibitions that attract international audiences. After all, it is often through art that the most powerful stories are told. While it is impossible to fully represent contemporary black art, we have compiled a selection of 10 important artists you should know.

Faith Ringgold

Born in Harlem in 1930, Faith Ringgold met with a tide of opposition as a black woman who wanted to be an artist. She is now a painter, sculptor, performance artist, writer, teacher and lecturer who has exhibited at MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum of American Art among others.

Last year she had a solo show at the Serpentine in London, her first in a European institution. Through her varied work, which includes quilted narrative scenes that directly challenge power structures and racism, Ringgold tackles prejudice with uncompromising directness.

“You can’t sit around waiting for somebody else to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it. That’s where the art comes from. It is a visual image of who you are. That is the power of being an artist.” –– Faith Ringgold

Rashid Johnson

New York based artists Rashid Johnson works across a vast variety of media to investigate themes of art history, culture and identity. Last year he made a film, inspired by the democratic nature of hiking, in which two black ballet dancers wear African inspired masks as they traverse an Aspen Mountain peak. Movement was a key element of the film. He told the Guardian, 'I think of my body moving while being followed by the police, the robotic movement. Not trying to move quickly... How does the black body function in space, when it’s being witnessed, versus when it’s not? It’s about how the body becomes accustomed to the conditions of stress and anxiety.'

Johnson is represented by Hauser and Wirth.

Kara Walker

New York based artist Kara Walker is perhaps best known for her narrative friezes, cut from paper silhouettes. Through this traditionally genteel medium she addresses the history of slavery, sexual exploitation and racism by combining the illustrative language of fairytale with often shocking imagery. Walker is also a filmmaker and sculptor. Visitors to Tate Modern this year will have seen her monumental sculpture Fons Americanus in the Turbine Hall. Made from recyclable cork wood and metal, it references Empire and Slavery and the three continents of Europe, African and North America.

Walker's exhibition A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be at Kunstmuseum Basel has been postponed until May 2021.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983, Njideka Akunyili Crosby currently lives and works in LA. She combines paint and collage to produce intimate scenes of family life and social gatherings, often painting herself and her husband in their home in the US. The paintings include collaged images from magazines, newspapers and the internet that reference everyday life in Nigeria. She told the Guardian in 2016, 'I think people sensationalise places in their heads, so I wanted to show just how normal life is in Nigeria.'

Crosby is represented by Victoria Miro Gallery

Image: Ike Ya, 2016 by Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley was born in LA in 1977. Known for his hyperreal portraits, painted against intricately patterns backgrounds, he achieved global recognition as the artist Barak Obama selected for his official portrait. Most of his portraits, however, are of people he encounters on the streets and for these he employs the visual language of traditional European portraits of saints and noblemen. Wiley is interested in identity, gender and sexuality, and travels the world in search of models.

'As I’ve been traveling, I started to notice that the way many people in other parts of the world interact with American culture is through black American expression. It’s an interesting phenomenon. And increasingly, I want to engage with that question.'

–– Kehinde Wiley

Wiley's exhibition at William Morris Gallery has been postponed. Check their website for future developments.

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates is a multi media artist based in Chicago and a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts. He trained in urban planning and preservation and explores these interests in his art, transforming museums and other public spaces into sites of social intervention, where communities can come together to explore music and craft. His work also investigates race, territory and inequality in the US. His exhibition at Tate Liverpool, which opened in December 2019, took as its starting point the story of the forced eviction of a small, but diverse community, living on the island of Malaga, off the coast of Maine.

Amy Sherald

Amy Sherald's large scale portraits document the people she meets on the streets. Her work focuses on the African American experience, challenging stereotypical representations. In 2018 she painted Michelle Obama's portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Sherald and Wiley are the first African American artists to make official presidential portraits.

Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam was born in Mississippi 1933 and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. Working as an abstract painter in Washington in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Right movement, his innovative art has been seen, in part, as a declaration against traditionally held expectations of African American artists. Gilliam is certainly one of the most important colour field painters of his generation. He experiments with the canvas, pulling it from the stretcher to create his drape paintings, draping it and reshaping it. His is also inspired by the improvisatory nature of jazz and continues to explore new ways of using paint.

Gilliam is represented by Pace Gallery.

Carrie Mae Weems

Artist and activist Carrie Mae Weems' career spans 30 years and her early work is as pertinent now as it ever was. Her oeuvre investigates race, gender and politics in photography, film and performance. For her extensive 1995 installation From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995), Weems took 19th and 20th photographs of enslaved black men and women and reprinted and reframed them in a way that exposed their original purpose as objects of unspeakable prejudice and degradation. She wanted, she said, to give the portraits 'another level of humanity and another level of dignity that was originally missing in the photograph.'

'Photography can be used as a powerful weapon in instituting political and cultural change.'

–– Carrie Mae Weems

Steve McQueen

London born artist and Academy Award winning director Steve McQueen's most recent exhibition at Tate Modern was beautiful in its bleakness. It examined death, ageing, toil and race without flinching. McQueen is famously not one to shy away from suffering, as his multi award winning film 12 Years a Slave demonstrated. Race, oppression and the fragile American dream have been strong themes within his work. In 1999 he won the Turner Prize and 2014 Time magazine listed him in it's annual Time 100, as one of the most influential people in the world.

McQueen is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery.