Diamela Cutino

Diamela Cutiño is a photographer from Havana, Cuba. Her art is known for its unique way of capturing movement, whether social, political, spiritual, or physical. Diamela is most know for her work documenting black culture in Cuba including the Lukumi religion, Hip Hop, and Jazz. Now Diamela lives in the Bay Area documenting the AfroAmerican womxn history.

My photography since the 90s represents the history of black people, first in Cuba and now in the US. Every image has a sound and soul. My vision is to continue documenting the history of black womax/n and the black community in every place where I am.

Tijera S. Williams

Tijera S. Williams is a multimedia painter, photographer, and design artist based in Los Angeles, CA. By utilizing traditional techniques of painting and drawing, and marrying that with strong color relationships and significance in dominant linear qualities, Tijera's work revises the male-centered Eurocentric worldview of that of a twenty-first-century Afro-diasporic female gaze as her driving communication. Tijera strives to create work that acts as a megaphone of advocacy for victims, inform and challenge those who have privilege, and deliver a beautiful yet charged image to represent her cultural significance as a Black woman in America.

Utilizing stark vibrant colors, conceptualizing patterns, and hiding optical illusions inside of the work, these three components are some of Tijera’s trademark style choices to translate the message across without compromising the complexity of the work to her audiences The source of her subject matter focuses on transforming and delivering re-appropriation based ideas of famed artworks from the fourteenth to sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance periods and connecting them to her current-day twenty-first century Afro-diasporic female worldview. Tijera’s overall subject matter is constantly and ever-consistently tying with current events, as the toll to be a Black woman in America is one that is completely unique on its own. By merging her personal activism with the Renaissance trope in the world today, she exploits the strong relationship to power and privilege, while also sharing the wealth with those who look reflect her who aren't able to be privileged enough to learn about the arts or even see themselves in this representation.

Ali Montgomery

Ali has devoted her life to art, healing and play. She believes that life is Art and that the spiritual and sexual are sacred when joined.

Ali is a social justice warrior, guiding groups and individuals as they explore the complexities of racism and internalized oppression. She trains mental health workers to support empowerment for our children.

This balance of play and justice, art and training - while allowing individuals to be fully who they are - is core to Ali.

How do we embrace our own truth, how do we hold sacred our culture, our sexuality, our spirituality, our identity distinct and different from every other individual? Ali Montgomery explores these questions through painting, photography, dance, song, connection to nature, expression of spirituality, and sexuality. Her passion is a force of nature which is evident in her art, training, and spiritual practice.

Ali has explored her African ancestry for over twenty-five years. From this frame, Ali is presenting this series of portraits, based on a few of the attributes traditionally embraced as aspects of God. She hopes these depictions support an understanding of how she views her own embodiment as The Black Woman as God.

Photography by WolfMercury

This project began three year ago when Ali attended the opening event for The Black Woman Is God. Ali was inspired to create a painting addressing the unification of Spirituality and Sexuality which Ali referrers to as the Spirexual Nexus.

Once the painting was created entitled “Kundalini Rising”, Ali then understood there needed to be a photo series in conjunction with the painting. The series depicts aspects of her African roots as a conjurer of The Black Woman as God; embodying the spiritual nexus as warrior and healer – powerful, fierce, sensual, and nurturing.

The series was shot with the intent to be seen through the lens of the most basic communication tool we have, our bodies. Embracing all of who she is in all her facets of being a Black Woman engaged on a journey, in the spiritual act of expression as God.

Serqet

Serqet “She Who Breathes” named by her elders- Founder of EMPWR ME ART, lives in Northern, Ca. As a new and passionate freelance artist, inspired by modern and innovative art forms. She loves working with photography, natural mediums, acrylic paint while exploring new techniques to cultivate her journey as an emerging artist and her need for self-reflection as the divine feminine. Most pieces are abstract/organic paintings with metal and reusable multimedia materials. Commission work is an option.

My intent for the pieces you see before you- in reverence of the 2020 movement #BlackLivesMatter . . . are the manifestations of an inward ancestral dialogue, as a woman of the African Diaspora and of the divine feminine.

iam4Muze

Mianta McKnight, from San Francisco, is a self-taught artist who is spreading her wings and sharing the world through her lens. She finds art healing, and for her, there are various forms of creative expression, that she embodies. She also is a professional dancer who finds freedom through movement and performs with the Daktari Dance Medicine Collective. Creative expression is a part of who she is. Drawing, airbrushing, murals, logo design, website designing, and artwork has allowed her to capture the creativity and has been a new form of communication when words can't quite express. So join her on this art journey and see the world through the eyes of iam4muze.

The moonlight owl warrior woman piece is about embracing feminine energy and sensuality while being energised by the moon while embracing the wisdom of the owl medicine.

Kweli Kitwana

Kweli holds an Associate of Studio Art, School of Art + Design at Montgomery College, Maryland. She serves as a Teaching Artist with the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, and Youth Spirit Artworks in Berkeley. Her preferred media include fiber art, surface design, and mixed media. As a "green artist," most of her work is created using found or upcycled canvas and materials. Kweli is also the owner of Movement Insight, LLC, consulting firm which provides strategic planning and leadership development for community organizations and activist. She is a nationally-recognized professional activist and social justice facilitator and trainer.

SHEltereD In pLace RESISTance aRt, by kWeli KiTWaNa. (c) 2020
These works have been created during shelter in place; and, the recent Anti-Black justice protest. Kweli primarily working through her thoughts about Black Ppl and our rightful existence and unapologetic resistance. Black people are, especially our Ancestors, Elders, and Children, a PEOPLE who have nothing to prove-and, only demand our "RIGHT-FULL" place in the world as contributors and believers. We ask for nothing to be handed to us, accept a cleared path to carry on our business of living our lives. All of this art is natural fibers, recycled finds, and altered materials. The figures in the work, are tiny symbols of "statues" who are keepers and the pollinators of historical Truth. Each one made from a metal-infused paperclip, patina from weeks buried in the soil of the Ohlone land. Kweli is using hand-dyed fibers in indigo, representing the undeniable power of currency over people, hence the enslavement of Africans. The red dye (madder root) is a representation of Black people's suffering, resistance, and determination.
Much of the beads highlight adornment and grace. Also, the appropriating, mimicking, and the fascination of POC's culture and rituals.

Lauren Catalina

Lauren Catalina is a woman who has an open spirit and enjoys being of service to her community.
She is an AfroLatina and native of California, a heart healer and visionary artist. She has her mother to thank for her artistic DNA and her grandmothers to thank for her connection to Spirit. You might find her doing a variety of things that most others stray away from; midwifing the birthing, the dying, administering Reiki, hosting Red Tents, and creating ceremonies for her beloveds. She considers herself a Sacred Artist, providing a safe space in which others can be held; free from worry or judgement. This is her gift.
Travel, creativity, shamanism and the arts are her lifeline and sacred work. The blank canvas is her portal into the quantum realm where she prays in paint, allowing her Muse to create. She paints the Divine Feminine that comes through the paintbrush over abstract layers of bold colors and symbology. Her passion and purpose as an Artist, are to teach, listen, share story, live in the moment, and embrace being human in all its facets, shades and colors.
As a member of the African diaspora, she is humbled and honored to share what comes through her representations of Black Women As Goddess.

Artist Statement

Lauren’s first acrylic painting, as a teenager, was inspired by a photo in National Geographic. It was of an Indigenous African person standing on one leg with a stick, at sunset. It was graded poorly by her art teacher, devastated, she forgot about it and herself as an artist.
Many years later, guided by her ancestors she studied and practiced shamanism. She created beautiful pieces of art with her hands; drums, baskets, altars and finally she added the canvas and paintbrush to her medicine basket. At the end of her training, by divine providence, her original high school art piece was given back to her as a gift.
Today she finds inspiration from life, trees, nature, and current happenings in the world. She makes marks and adds dots, along with prayers, words, and symbols often unseen. Finally a woman emerges out from the underpainting and boldly, lays witness to God.

Delgreta Brown

Contemporary and Afrofuturism Visual Artist Delgreta Brown is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (2005). Since 2008, the emerging visual artist has exhibited her artwork throughout Northern California.

Delgreta participated in the curated art exhibit "Nightlight Multimedia Festival" in 2017. The festival hosted by SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco, debuted her experimental black-light installation titled "The Nightshade Series."

The dynamic artist accepted an Eco-art project from Sacramento First Festival in May 2018. The commissioned project was an art installation representing cultural diversity with the use of recyclable materials. At the music festival she displayed a unique interactive optical, sculptural and luminous installation titled, "The Ocularium."

The Sacramento-based artist was invited as a featured Visual Artist for the "Arts Equity Summit" in 2019 hosted by Arts Connect International (ACI) in Boston, MA. She is a 2019 Grant-recipient of the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI).

The self-taught artist's recent solo exhibitions include "Immortal Hues" in (2018) and "Convergence" in (2019). She recently completed a five-month exhibition at Marysville City Hall in late 2019. The exhibitions introduced abstract works and mixed medium portraits. Delgreta's vibrant art often expresses themes of love, hope, music, prosperity, exploration, navigation, sensuality, evolution, cultural aesthetics and spirituality through an African American perspective.

Currently, she is a "Sower" Grantee of the Black Artists Fund (BAF). Delgreta continues to expand in her artistry.

Artist Statement

Collectively the submitted Afrofuturism works of art represent topics pertinent to the African Diaspora. The five paintings address divinity, matriarchy, celestial and terrestrial origins, autonomy, self-awareness, self-love, the attributes of natural states, navigation, coding, technology and evolution.