Nnena is the 2025 winner of the Turner Prize. She is the first learning-disabled artist to win. Born in Glasgow in 1966 to Nigerian parents, Kalu is known for sculptures resembling cocoon-like forms that she strews with videotape, cellophane, and other unconventional materials.
#nnenakalu
Local (to the Triangle!) writer Colony Little calls our attention to Uman’s kaleidoscopic journeys. Their journey spans from Somalia to New York (and soon the south of France); this self-taught artist transforms migration, memory, and emotion into vibrant worlds of movement and hue.
More and more
#uman
is a British-Ghanaian artist and curator living in London, and is the founder of the Black British Female Artist (BBFA) Collective – a platform that supports Black women artists. Gbewonyo studied BA European Textile Design at Bradford School of Art and Design and began her career as a knitwear designer in New York. Following six years in the industry, redundancy prompted her return to the UK and subsequent career change. Her art practice investigates identity, womanhood in particular, whilst advocating the healing benefits of craft.
#emamgbewonyo
like Magdalena has work featured in To Weave the Sky. A queer artist who was born of a Muslim father and raised by his Christian grandmother, Adam’s elaborate textiles address the diverse cultural and spiritual contexts that continue to form his identity. The artist has embraced Islamic spirituality and particularly Sufism, and his works might be read as enlarged prayer rugs.
More (video interview)
#igshaanadams
Larry Ossei-Mensah predicts to Artsy that abstraction by artists of color will become even more prominent in 2023. The genre, Ossei-Mensah believes, is essential to shifting the public’s belief that artists of color should only make representational work that is immediately legible. He refers to Atta.
#attakwami
Artforum notes that Bonolo decided early in her career what she did not want her art practice to be about: the political burden of being a Black woman in South Africa. Born in 1992, the artist found that most of the art history she encountered in her country was charged with the discourses of racial and cultural identity politics. Since her time studying at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, Kavula has been determined to play and experiment with form.
If readers find the broader conversation about abstraction in the hands of Black creatives interesting, you should look at Artsy’s ’23 curator outlook in which Larry Ossei-Mensah predicts that abstraction by artists of color will become even more prominent in 2023.
#bonolokavula
Nour Jaouda is a Libyan artist, based in London and Cairo and is also a Hopper Prize finalist like Cameron.
More
#nourjaouda
Victor is an internationally-renowned Nigerian-American artist based in Washington, D.C. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures reimagine the ancient Nigerian communication system, Nsibidi, to explore a diverse spectrum of meaning addressing historical narratives, the contemporary African diaspora, and humanity’s connection to the sacred. Much of his work is figurative- his public art is this blogger’s favorite.
#victorekpuk
Portia is now represented by David Zwirmer.
Booooom puts the spotlight on Guzel’s illustrations.
Neither is an abstractionist- I chose this juxtaposition partly for that reason (and also because they both exude dream-like qualities).
#portiazvavahera
#guzelvural
Like Agnes is an up and coming artist hailing from the continent of Africa (her home is Zimbabwe).
#amandashingiraimushate
Painting After Art is Dead 