To recognize Black History Month, Artsy is spotlighting 29 emerging Black artists—one for each day of this important month. This list hopes to highlight the work of emerging Black American artists who are at pivotal stages of their careers.
These are exceptional creators from around the country who are working in different media, including the multimedia textiles of Ambrose Rhapsody Murray; the textured abstractions of Ashante Kindle; the fanciful, figurative depictions of Lauryn Levette; and the enigmatic photographs of Shan Wallace.
Here is the first installment of Artsy’s emerging artist series for Black History Month. Watch out for part two, dropping later this month.
B. 1992, Dallas. Lives and works in Baltimore and New York.
Portrait of Abigail Lucien by Brandon Thomas Brown. Courtesy of Deli Gallery.
Abigail Lucien
boule de fwa VI, 2023
Tiwani Contemporary
Abigail Lucien crafts sculptures that speak to colonial lineages, and contemplate ways that people use imagination and myth to create new realities. For example, their piece boule de fwa VI (2023), a pink candle fashioned from acrylic, vinyl, and steel, prompts questions about imagination and care. The sculpture seems to be ignited from both ends, creating a surreal and almost otherworldly ritual object.
The motifs that Lucien employs in their work—like candles—are related to grief and meditation, exploring how the artist has worked through their own history to process complicated (and sometimes painful) experiences. A song of ascents (2020) unpacks similar themes, stacking blocks of pink soap cast in cinderblock molds with heart cut-outs, into the shape of steps. A lit candle sits mournfully at the lowest step. The poignant work pays homage to the artist’s father and grandfather, who were both lost to the coronavirus.
Lucien was recently selected for the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, and their work has been displayed at institutions around the country, including SculptureCenter and MoMA PS1 in New York, as well as Atlanta Contemporary, and UICA in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In spring 2023, they participated in the Amant residency in New York, and completed archival research related to the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. They are currently represented by Deli Gallery in New York.
B. 1990, Seattle. Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Portrait of Alex Anderson by Ilona Szwarc. Courtesy of Alex Anderson and Sargent’s Daughters.
The sculptor Alex Anderson creates ceramic works that are skillful and strange—they employ a variety of techniques to fashion pieces that use contemporary symbolism along with cheeky wordplay in their titles. “Anderson spotlights his experience as a gay, Asian-African American, decidedly de-flaking the crustiness of the Western ceramic tradition,” wrote Julie Weitz for Contemporary Art Review LA in 2020.
Anderson’s work Spring (2019) is testament to this approach: The work shows leaves and flowers arranged in a curvilinear heart. At first glance, the sculpture seems like a normal wreath wrought from foliage, but upon closer inspection, the flowers appear anthropomorphic, appended with eyes and hands. These delicate flourishes add a fun touch to a centuries-old medium.
Another piece, Lovely Shade Flower (2021), shows a black flower with a face, a single tear sliding from its eye, its mouth rendered in a spirited scribble. Such choices allow for the artist to “counterbalance baroque decorative motifs—like flower petals and leaves—with three-dimensional emojis that adorn his sculptures as digital punctuations,” as Weitz observed in her review.
Anderson’s work was recently featured in group exhibitions with Superposition gallery in Miami, The Hole in L.A., and UTA Artist Space in Beverly Hills, California.
B. 1996, Jacksonville, Florida. Lives and works in New Orleans.
Portrait of Ambrose Rhapsody Murray by Toni Esposito. Courtesy of Ambrose Rhapsody Murray.
Known for their multimedia textiles and paintings, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray creates vibrant tapestries that speak to family history, Black femininity, and spirituality. For example, their weaving The hummingbird hovered within the hour (2023) combines family photographs in a disjointed grid, whispering narratives of a rich and complex lineage using soft fabrics and muted, earthy colors.
In Phthalo memory (2022), the artist uses blue and purple shades to digitally weave archival and family photos, in order to “excavate generations of buried emotions and memories that have been stuck within my family system, as well as within our bodies, leading to illness across my matrilineal line,” Rhapsody Murray wrote. “I am trying to make sense of the disjointed relationships and stories of the women in my family, but also honoring them, their beauty/complicatedness and longing to connect with them.”
Rhapsody Murray also explored these themes in 2021 in a solo presentation for Fridman Gallery entitled “Within listening distance of the sea…” Many of the textile pieces in the show were sourced from archival photographs of Black women and girls taken in the early 1900s, which were often traded as pornographic postcards.
Last year, they attended Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Senegal and were featured in Forbes’s annual “30 Under 30” list. They are currently represented by Fridman Gallery in New York.
B. 1990, Clarksville, Tennessee. Lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.
Portrait of Ashante Kindle. Courtesy of Red Arrow Gallery.
Ashante Kindle often creates compositions encrusted with thick, layered paint. The artist draws inspiration from unexpected sources—like the tops of nappy heads viewed from above or music videos from the 1990s—to create abstracted renditions of everyday Black experiences.
“I’m never able to create the same piece more than once,” Kindle said in a previous interview with Artsy. “And I feel like that [abstraction] specifically speaks to our existence. It speaks to how we exist as people: Many of us [Black people] have similarities, but Blackness isn’t the same for everyone, right? And that’s really beautiful. And as far as hairstyles go, even if you bring an image of a hairstyle to your beautician, she’ll never make something exactly like that.”
The painting Cause I Know My Joy’s Coming in the Morning Light (2021) viscerally displays Kindle’s ability to use texture, its metallic pink paint applied in swirls and spirals. Other works, like Til the Very Second I’m Gone (2022), employ circular compositional elements to explore light and texture.
Last year, Kindle’s work was featured in Kleaver Cruz’s book The Black Joy Project, and she is currently represented by Red Arrow Gallery.
B. 1993, Houston. Lives and works in Minneapolis.
Portrait of Jaylon Israel Hicks. Courtesy of Jaylon Israel Hicks.
Using a diverse array of media, Jaylon Israel Hicks creates art that analyzes themes of globalization and modern society. His work Untitled (Protest) (2020), a provocative photographic image of a shopping cart engulfed in flames, is a clear nod to the protests following George Floyd’s death during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hicks expertly captures those emotions of rage, uncertainty, and chaos that so many of us felt at that time. Other pieces, like Ex (2022), reference the fraught relationship that we have with consumerism, shipping, and globalization.
Writing about this body of work, shown at Hicks’s solo exhibition at MAXIMILLIAN WILLIAM in 2023, Salena Barry noted that “Hicks, a student of material science, plays with the significance of polystyrene through the prefix ‘Ex’: Extract, excel, exploit, excuse. These verbs, and others, relate to ideas bound up in discourses on climate change and consumption.”
Hicks is currently represented by MAXIMILLIAN WILLIAM gallery.
B. 1989, Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Kevin Claiborne by Gioncarlo Valentine. Courtesy of Kevin Claiborne.
Known for his thought-provoking conceptual art, Kevin Claiborne is a multidisciplinary artist who uses everything from printmaking to photography to painting to prompt questions about education, Black history, and mathematics.
The polymathic creator’s interests stem from his unique origin story: Claiborne received a BS in mathematics from North Carolina Central University, a master’s in higher education from Syracuse University, and an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University. This diverse educational background helps Claiborne to create pieces that combine information from different disciplines. His collage Landscape (2022) is testament to his varied interests: The piece contains a diverse array of images, including a woman’s breast, a pair of eyes, and a text that reads “landscape of blood and cotton.” These elements hint at America’s fraught history of slavery and colonialism, a legacy that deeply informs Claiborne’s practice.
“Working conceptually is a necessary and political starting point for me, because through this practice, one can reach a deeper, more critical space where a wider range of responses and conversations become available,” Claiborne said in a previous interview with Artsy.
Last year, Claiborne had a solo exhibition at Public Service in Stockholm, and he’s currently participating in a two-person show at Latchkey Gallery in New York.
B. 1999, Philadelphia. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Lauryn Levette by Marcus Maddox. Courtesy of New Image Art.
Lauryn Levette’s paintings are otherworldly. She deftly uses brightly colored brushstrokes to envision new realms where Black femmes reign supreme and oppression is eliminated.
“I also think a lot about how blackness isn’t a monolith and that there’s not enough Black art out there,” Levette told Black Cherry magazine in 2020. “I know that when we can each tell our individual stories and see more Black artists, we can all learn more about each other and show that blackness exists in different ways and different nuances—it’s super important for people to know that.”
Her painting Sitting On Chrome (2022) tells one story about Black femininity. It shows a figure holding a hat and a knife to her chest; another person in the background sits with her legs wide open, smoking a joint. This painting is bathed in dark blue, with bright green highlights giving it a surreal quality that heightens its intimations of violence. The women in this image are assertive and unabashed, and Levette aptly portrays the power of Black female sexuality without fetishizing the figure.
Black feminine strength also fuels Desperado (2023), in which a woman points a gun straight towards the viewer, as if warding off their voyeurism. Such compositional choices help to complicate typical representations of women in art history: Levette makes the female figure an agent instead of a passive recipient of the viewer’s gaze.
Last year, Levette had her second solo show at New Image Art in Los Angeles. She was also featured in Good Black Art’s “Beyond the Boroughs” campaign.
B. 1992, Los Angeles. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Na’ye Perez by Marcus Maddox. Courtesy of Na’ye Perez.
Na’ye Perez uses different techniques—including printmaking, painting, and drawing—to talk about his community. His subjects include loved ones: Higher, Thy Will / Peace of Mind (2022), for example, shows a friend of the artist’s dressed in a track and field uniform while performing a high jump. The image is peppered with references to Black history, from upraised fists—symbols of resistance and protest—to visual allusions to the Pan-African flag. Sunsets in Harlem (2019), meanwhile, depicts a father cradling a young child in his arms. Such tender depictions work to correct historically negative depictions of Black families, and reinforce the different ways that relatives can express care for one another.
Perez also looks to Black community more broadly, drawing from diverse influences from Black history, literature, and music. His 2022 painting What You Know About Love, which was exhibited at the Brooklyn nonprofit BRIC, is just one example of this: The title is a reference to a song by the late rapper Pop Smoke.
“People always ask me who my audience is,” Perez said in a video interview with BRIC. “My audience is, first and foremost, Black people. Even though I start with my own experiences and memories, my work is bigger than that. I want people to hopefully find a little bit of themselves in the work.”
B. 1991, New York. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Patrick Alston. Courtesy of Bode Projects.
Known for his colorful abstractions, Patrick Alston creates distinct works that innovatively employ color and texture. For example, his 2023 painting Untitled (Yellow) is an explosion of energy, featuring a kaleidoscope of mustard yellow, magenta, cobalt blue, and chartreuse, applied in emphatic scribbles, straight lines, and globs. Another recent painting, Untitled (Blue) (2023), brings together strokes of teal, beet red, and titanium white swirling around each other in an intricate dance. The composition is chaotic, but its combination of cool tones brings a sense of harmony.
Abstraction allows Alston to experiment with material without being too prescriptive about the meaning of his work, as he explained in a 2021 interview with Artnet News. “I feel it’s my mission to have important conversations around what a Black artist is and can be,” he said.
Alston is currently represented by Bode, which mounted a solo show of his work in 2022. His first museum exhibition is on view at the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
B. 1991, Baltimore. Lives and works in Baltimore and New York.
Portrait of Shan Wallace by Nayquan Shuler. Courtesy of Shan Wallace.
Shan Wallace’s photographs brim with electric energy, capturing vibrant scenes of Black, and often queer, life. Her 2020 photo Body category, for instance, comes from a series that centers ballroom culture. The charged image features a couple dancing at a party, caught by Wallace in the middle of an intimate moment, but seemingly unaware of her gaze.
“It’s about making sure that there are people who are Black and queer in this archive that go far beyond images of brutality and pain but include images of celebration, love, and communion,” Wallace told The Cut of the series. Indeed, Wallace’s photos are imbued with an intimacy that’s often difficult to capture on camera.
Wallace has contributed photography to outlets including the New York Times, NPR, and The Cut. Last year, her work was featured in a group exhibition at NXTHVN in New Haven, Connecticut, and she has also exhibited at institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art.
B. 1990, Atlanta. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Taylor Simmons by Jacob Consenstein. Courtesy of Taylor Simmons.
In paintings, prints, and drawings, Taylor Simmons foregrounds aspects of Black culture—drawing particular influence from the music and fashion cultures of Atlanta, where he was raised.
“I think about how many books there are documenting white subcultures, like punk,” Simmons told i-D in 2023. “We have the same niches in the Black community, it just doesn’t have names, so it’s not as celebrated or documented.
“Honestly, we need a Black version of Wolfgang Tillmans,” he continued. “I think that’s why I focus so much on body and clothes in my paintings, because those little signifiers are super important.”
To that end, the artist uses fragmentation, expressive line work, and bold colors to portray predominantly Black subjects. For example, his painting Top of the Game (2022) shows a man broken down, Cubist-style, into geometric shapes; his eyes seem sandwiched to his nose, and his face is adorned with two pairs of lips. Another piece, Spectators (2023), uses drips and delicate washes of paint to depict a group of four Black men, with an emphasis on contour rather than detail. Though Simmons largely draws from archival images to create these works, he adds a distinctive flair through his color and compositional choices.
Simmons is currently represented by Public Gallery in London, which hosted his debut solo exhibition in 2022. Last year, he opened his first institutional show at the Sixi Museum in Nanjing, China.
B. 1999, New York. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Ryan Cosbert. Courtesy of Bode Projects.
Ryan Cosbert uses acrylic paint to create dynamic, abstract compositions in compelling color combinations like bright blue, lemon yellow, and viridian green. Through the addition of objects like beads, shells, bullet casings, and other textural elements, she pushes these works beyond the bounds of two dimensions. In Motherland NO.3 (2022), for example, emphatically applied splotches of textured yellow and green paint give the surface a sculptural feel, like the three-dimensional bits of acrylic have a life of their own.
Cosbert’s bright canvases, while alluring, are more than pretty pictures. Many of her works are grounded in research on topics such as medical care in the Black community, architecture from the African continent, and generational trauma—all of which were surfaced in her 2022 solo show “The Past Is The Future And The Future Is Now” at UTA Artist Space in Atlanta. In bringing a scholarly approach to abstraction, Cosbert aims to uplift and inform viewers.
B. 1995, Southfield, Michigan. Lives and works in New Orleans.
Portrait of Ute Petit by Amir Saadiq. Courtesy of Swivel Gallery.
Ute Petit brings other worlds to life in her works, which comprise textiles, drawings, and paintings. Her vivid drawings depict bizarre worlds where snakes leap forth from the ground and guns morph into animalistic appendages, while plants seem to engulf the human figures that inhabit their environments.
“I work ancestrally,” Petit wrote when describing her work, noting her relatives’ roles as “quilters, educators, and farmers.” With a childhood spent with her grandparents in Mississippi and visiting farms in Japan, she incorporates her love of agriculture with her artistic practice. Now based in New Orleans, she works towards “rematriating” the land she works on there. This harmony with nature is evident in her practice. For instance, Petit’s graphite drawing Red Tail Ryda (2022) shows a central figure riding astride an elk, its ears curling up towards the rider, who looks forward with fierce determination. Another piece, Chicken Head (2023), depicts a person clutching the carcass of a dead bird while palm trees sway in the background.
In 2022, Petit was awarded the Queer Art Illuminations grant for Black trans women working in visual art. Swivel Gallery also recently announced the representation of Petit following her debut solo exhibition with the gallery, “LusaHumma: Land of The Black Red.”
B. 1998, Washington, D.C. Lives and works in New York.
Portrait of Emmanuel Massillon by Anthony Hilliard. Courtesy of Emmanuel Massillon.
The multimedia conceptual artist Emmanuel Massillon is interested in how specific historical touchpoints relate to people of African descent. For example, his canvas Dog Food (Riot Ready, 1960’s) (2023) contains a photographic print of a black-and-white German Shepherd set against a painted fluorescent orange background. This work, taken from a wider series incorporating dog food, is imbued with a deeper meaning: “My dog food paintings talk about Black people in America’s history with dogs and the civil rights movement,” Massillon said in an interview with Platform Art. He added, “Dog food is also a slang term for heroin. And heroin and the civil rights movement directly affected Black people at the same time, around the late ’60s, early ’70s.”
Massillon is represented by cadet capela, which presented a two-person show of the artist’s work last year.
Header image credit: Taylor Simmons, detail of “Spectators,” 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Public Gallery.
