Krista Franklin a poetic collages of lifes

Krista Franklin is a poet and visual artist from Dayton, OH who lives and works in Chicago. Her work straddles the literary and visual worlds. As a writer and mixed media artist, Krista create complex, interrogative images that reflect the vernacular experiences, dream worlds, and psychic landscapes of the black community in the United States and larger African Diaspora.


Her art has a strong focus on subtext. She often utilize distinct, recognizable and familiar images of people of color, popular iconography, and the juxtaposition of text to engage the viewer and deconstruct the ways in which our gaze reifies and distorts notions of culture and gender, race and class, power and privilege.


Krista is deeply inspired by popular culture and public history, as well as by the frenetic glamour of music videos and magazines. Using a variety of mixed media — acrylic, watercolor, handmade paper and found objects: old letters, vintage magazine advertisements, playing cards, old photographs, and receipts —she work to create "post-modern" American totems wherein the complexities of our present and our past(s) are evoked through purposeful layering


African Diaspora folklore and mythmaking are the conceptual concerns of my current visual explorations. Informed by the gothic fugitive slave narrative of Toni Morrison's Beloved, the shapeshifter, telepathic, and dystopic visions of Octavia E. Butler, and the elaborate collages of Romare Bearden, my recent work in papermaking, letterpress and bookmaking explore retro-Afro-Futuristic and Afro-Surrealist themes of the "fantastic" and the "speculative". - via artist statement



“At the heart of my collages is a deep concern for creating complex and interrogative images, dream worlds and psychic landscapes. Deeply inspired by American popular culture and histories, as well as by the frenetic glamour of music videos and magazines, I create my collages in much the same way a hiphop producer creates a beat: through a process comparable to ‘sampling.’ Using a variety of medium—paint, handmade paper, playing cards, old photographs, receipts—I create new visions and totems wherein image is in dialogue with words (sometimes prominent, sometimes obscured), and the complexities of histories are evoked through a purposeful layering.” - krista franklin

Wangechi Mutu This You Call Civilization

Kenyan-born, New York-based Wangechi Mutu has trained as both a sculptor and anthropologist. Her work explores the contradictions of female and cultural identity and makes reference to colonial history, contemporary African politics and the international fashion industry. Drawing from the aesthetics of traditional crafts, science fiction and funkadelia, Mutu’s works document the contemporary myth making of endangered cultural heritage.



Wangechi Mutu's work has often seemed to bear the gaze of a perpetual outsider, simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the discovery of another fresh outrage in the lands in which she travels. Much of Mutu's work to date has been concerned with the myriad forms of violence and misrepresentation visited upon women, especially black women, in the contemporary world




Her upbringing proved to be a modern and urban one at different phases of her life. Mutu wasoften baffled by the Western tendency to perceive Africa in terms of its traditionalculture. Being that she was born and raised in the urban portion of Africa she was unable to relate to the “western generalization of the motherland

Serge Gay Jr.

Serge Gay Jr. is a Grammy nominated illustrator / fine artist / graphic designer currently based out of San Francisco, California.


The story of Serge Gay Jr. began with his birth in Port-au Price, Haiti and developed during his years in the U.S. His art infuses inspiration born from living in cities from coast to coast. Influence in his work can be found from the culture of his homeland, New York, Miami and Detroit. Currently the story continues to evolve from the west coast of the United States. He is the youngest of three boys and a third generation artist. Art is in his blood and he has felt this talent as long as he can remember.


Serge wasted no time in blazing a path for himself. Early on he embarked on a journey of self-discovery aimed at unlocking the potential of his deep seeded creativity through education. The first major step was attending one of the top art high schools in America, New World School of the Arts. This Miami institution exposed him to relationships, concepts and experiences to nurture, develop and channel his artistic instinct. The College for Creative Studies in Detroit would then help him to further refine his skills and build the foundation for his art career.


Since graduating, Serge has taken residence in San Francisco where he continues to explore and share his talent with the world through career oriented and non-profit freelance projects. - via SGjr.wordpress



Serge's work also was featured in many music videos check the link here ( VIDEOS ) to see.

Laylah Ali

Laylah Ali was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1968, and lives and works in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She received a BA from Williams College and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The precision with which Ali creates her small, figurative, gouache paintings on paper is such that it takes her many months to complete a single work.

She meticulously plots out every aspect of her work in advance, from subject matter to choice of color and the brushes that she will use. In style, her paintings resemble comic-book serials, but they also contain stylistic references to hieroglyphics and American folk-art traditions.

Ali often achieves a high level of emotional tension in her work as a result of juxtaposing brightly colored scenes with dark, often violent subject matter that speaks of political resistance, social relationships, and betrayal.

Although Ali’s interest in representations of socio-political issues and current events drives her work, her finished paintings rarely reveal specific references. Her most famous and longest-running series of paintings depicts the brown-skinned and gender-neutral Greenheads, while her most recent works include portraits as well as more abstract biomorphic images.

Ali endows the characters and scenes in her paintings with everyday attributes like dodge balls, sneakers, and Band-aids, as well as historically- and culturally-loaded items such as nooses, hoods, robes, masks, and military-style uniforms. Her drawings, which she describes as “automatic,” are looser and more playful than the paintings and are often the source of material that she explores more deeply in her paintings.

- ( PBS art21 )