Juneteenth: 6 African American Artists You Should Support
Created in collaboration with Yellow
Juneteenth – an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, has been celebrated by African-Americans since the late 1800s. Although the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, many enslaved African-Americans were only informed of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended more than two years later on June 19, 1865.
Since then, June 19th has been annual day of celebration amongst African American communities. However, it was not until this year that the US announced that it will officially recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday, after Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Thursday. To celebrate, we’re sharing the work of six African American artists – exploring various themes from environmentalism and climate to social change within the Black community in America.
Allison Janae Hamilton is a visual artist born in Kentucky, raised in Florida. Using plant matter, layered imagery, complex sounds, and animal remains, Hamilton creates immersive spaces that consider the ways that the American landscapes contribute to our ideas of “Americana” and our social relationships to space in the face of a changing climate, particularly within the rural American south.
Over the course of history, Black athletes have continued to push towards the equality in the sports sector whilst racist white fans have often pushed back, demanding that black athletes play without politics. Armstrong explores this push and pull in his work while combining historical, everyday, and imaginative imagery, rendered in bold colours, to depict the lives of Black people in America.
Bracken incorporates West African weaving, European tapestries and quilting from the American South to form the base of his tapestries. He also adopts the use of commercial dyes as well as unconventional colourants such as wine, tea and bleach. These individual elements combine in a narrative which explores the artist’s identity as a queer Black man within the context of where he grew up, the South.
LaToya Ruby Frazier is an American artist and professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of her most notable projects was made during the five months she spent living in Flint, Michigan where she documented the lives of those affected by the city’s water crisis for her photo essay ‘Flint is Family’. During her time in Michigan, the artist spent her time with three generations of women–the poet Shea Cobb, her mother Renee, and daughter Zion–observing their day-to-day lives as they endured one of the most devastating ecological disasters in US history: the water crisis in their hometown.
Marcus Brutus is born and raised in Maryland to two Haitian parents. During his upbringing, he was exposed to art through his school trip visits to the National Gallery of the Arts. Brutus is a figurative painter who depicts scenes from daily life, both real and imagined. All the figures in his work are African American, depicting a vast breath of emotions and histories embedded in black experience.
Reginald Adams and his team of five artists transformed a previously nondescript grey wall in downtown Galveston. The artist and his team painted a mural — which includes several scenes, or “portals” — to honour the celebration of Juneteenth. Large painted words at the bottom read “Absolute Equality” — the mural’s name. Their studio is world renowned for award winning tile mosaic murals, sculptures, and art installations which are strategically located in historically marginalized communities across the U.S.
This content was brought to you by Yellow.
Yellow is a London-based arts platform that specialises in showcasing and providing support to artists from the African, Caribbean and Asian Diaspora, through content creation, live events, exhibitions and mentorship. Co-founded by siblings Aisha and Oreoluwa Ayoade, the enterprise started as a print and online magazine in 2017, however over the past four years Yellow has developed into a supportive enterprise with a community of over 6,000 artists and creatives.