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Before coming on as the director of this film, I thought I understood Arthur Jafa’s practice. I had seen APEX and Love is the Message, the Message is Death, and saw AJ’s work as chronicling Black life ...

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Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations ...

Nicholas Hlobo was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1975 and grew up in Transkei, South Africa. His works on paper, sculptures, installations, and performances utilize rubber, ribbon, leather, and ...

Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, and lives and works in New York. Johnson, who got his start as a photographer, works across media—including video, sculpture, painting, and ...

Jaimie Warren was born in 1980 in Waukesha, Wisconsin; she lives and works in New York. Warren’s photography and performance practice is deeply connected to her work with Whoop Dee Doo, a traveling ...

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures ...

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. Opie investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and ...

LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and currently lives and works in Chicago. An artist and activist, LaToya Ruby Frazier uses photography, video, and performance to ...

Artist Walton Ford discusses his work’s relationship to colonialism and political humor. ART21: Can you talk about the series of paintings you’ve been working on that deal with Sir Richard Burton? The ...

Rackstraw Downes was born in Kent, England in 1939. Often described as a realist painter, Downes prefers not to use that term. He views the act of seeing and the art of representation as culturally ...