Throughout paintings, works on paper, ceramics, and site-specific mural and sound installations, Michaela Yearwood-Dan (b. 1994; London, UK) endeavors to build spaces of queer community, abundance, and joy. Yearwood-Dan’s singular visual language draws on a diverse range of influences, including Blackness, queerness, femininity, healing rituals, and carnival culture.
#michaelayearwooddan
Here is the beginning of a list of some of the exhibitions that have addressed the contributions of black artists to the canon over the last decade or so. I hope the critical community will add to this list over time and please leave me a comment if there is one I’ve missed.
Four Generations, at The Baltimore Museum of Art, featured the Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art which is widely recognized as one of the most significant collections of modern and contemporary work by African and African Diasporan artists. The show drew upon the collection’s unparalleled holdings to explore the critical contributions made by black artists to the evolution of visual art.
Abstraction in the Black Diaspora at False Flag featured Tariku Shiferaw, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Alteronce Gumby, & Ashanté Kindle.
Black Abstractionists: From Then ‘til Now, curated by Dexter Wimberly focused on Black abstract artists spanning multiple generations, starting in the 1960’s and ending with young artists working today.
Beyond the Spectrum: Abstraction in African American Art, 1950-1975 at Michael Rosenfield Gallery presented abstract painting and sculpture by a group of American artists working in the years just before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement. It took its queue from Kenkebala House which hosted The Search For Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-1975 in 1991 (which, like several of these, has a catalog).
There are also, often online-only “exhibits” available from time to time, such as 10 Black British Artists Working in Abstraction organized by Allyssia Alleyne over on Artsy. Black Abstract Artists: Exploring Innovative Techniques from Swann Auction house covers many of the artists noted in the exhibits above and focuses on their technical contributions.
Kenneth Victor Young (1933–2017), was an American artist, educator, and designer. He is associated with the Washington Color School art movement (along with Sam and Alma).
#kennethvictoryoung
An African-American sculptor who at age 33 became an expatriate in Paris from America, Harold Cousins worked in a variety of mediums including stone, wood, metal and terra cotta, and in a variety of styles from realism to total abstraction.
More (gallery that represents his estate)
#haroldcousins
shows with Addis Fine Art which has outposts in London and Ababa (Ethiopia), and is a black-owned gallery (which I know about thanks to Artsy).
#tesfayebekele
If you are curious about the impact black artists are having on abstraction, you can use the hashtag function on the website (link).
Familiarize yourself and lift up these practices, particularly those that have been mostly ignored in the canon to date, such as
Juxtapoz takes us overseas to look at Tunjia’s newest at White Cube’s Seoul outpost, in which the NYC-based Brit “explores the diasporic body, African subjecthood and autonomy.” The figuration in the work peeks through, similar to earlier work by fellow Brit Cecily.
#tunjiadeniyijones
like Jacob is in Future Proof. He also shows with Wellancora who notes that “Hazlewood uses the structural language of abstraction as a clarifying act of progress in what he considers an unstable world.”
#carlehazelwood
A visual artist and writer, A’Driane Nieves is a U.S. Air Force veteran and a self-taught painter. At the urging of her therapist, she began painting as a form of art therapy in 2011 during her recovery from postpartum depression and following her later diagnosis of bipolar disorder. This initial experimentation led to her using Abstract Expressionist painting styles as a way to overcome the impacts of childhood abuse, specifically emotional suppression. Influenced by Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Bernice Bing, and early Black abstract painters ranging from Alma Thomas to Mary Lovelace O’Neal.
#adrianenieves
Because of my interest in Albers, a friend who recently saw a few of Steve’s pieces from Homage to the Auction Block (2019-ongoing) series shared them with me. The work posits that the basic Modernist form is indeed the slave auction block. With the discovery of that form, all the other forms became possible.
#stevelocke
Maren Hassinger (born Maren Louise Jenkins in 1947) is an African-American artist and educator whose career spans four decades. Hassinger uses sculpture, film, dance, performance art, and public art to explore the relationship between the natural world and industrial materials.
#marenhassinger
For Burnaway’s series CRUSH, Michelle Santiago Cortés details the dance-drawings and improvisational mark-making of Awilda Sterling-Duprey. Throughout her decades-long career, Sterling-Duprey has paid close attention to how movement appears in painting and how dance lends itself to its own kind of painterly gesture. She has distilled elements of both disciplines to their constituent parts, which can be broken down into kinds of information: visual, spatial, tactile, sonic, and so on.
#awildasterlingduprey
has new installation work, paintings and drawings framing explorations of space, geography, mapping, and land/waterscapes, especially of the African diaspora in New Suns at Lawndale in Houston.
#ayannajolivetmccloud
Saw below during a recent trip to the High Museum in Atlanta. Gabriel is interested in abstraction as a mode of painting that offers an open-ended forum for posing questions about the nature of his everyday experience as a Black artist. For Mills, abstraction represents a rebellious way of approaching marginalized and countercultural political ideologies through unencumbered expressivity.
#gabrielmills
Painting After Art is Dead 