Black African Art and Dance

Dudley Vaccianna Collection
Dudley Vaccianna creates wonderful Caribbean scenes on hand-blown glass vases, hand-blown plates and paintings.
Picture
 Kadir Nelson:  “I feel that art’s highest function is that of a mirror,reflecting the  innermost beauty and divinity of the human spirit; and is most effective when it  calls the viewer to remember one’s highest self. I choose subject matter that has  emotional and spiritual resonance and focuses on the journey of the hero as it  relates to the personal and collective stories of people."

 Click to see Kadir Nelson's work.
Dance and the Cultural Exchange
Upaj: Improvise
62-year-old Indian Kathak master/guru: Pandit Chitresh Das and Tap protégé of Gregory Hines and Savion Glover, and dance historian: Jason Samuels Smith.
What fascinates me is the exchange an the education this journey and exchange brings to them both.  
Smokie Norful- Thank you for my life
Beautiful dance interpretation by 4LifeIDance
Piercing The Veil
Schomburg Center " 2015 fall exhibition, "Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination," through a special artist talk and presentation with James Cornelius Lewis and Manzel Bowman." 
Aaron Fowler

His art of mixed media expresses his own experience of what black art is today. "One interprets  contemporary urban life in found wood and industrial paint with unblinking emotion."
Wangechi Mutu

"Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Mutu scrutinizes globalization by combining found materials, magazine cutouts, sculpture, and painted imagery. Sampling such diverse sources as African traditions, international politics, the fashion industry, pornography, and science fiction, her work explores gender, race, war, colonialism, global consumption, and the exoticization of the black female body. Mutu is best known for spectacular and provocative collages depicting female figures—part human, animal, plant, and machine—in fantastical landscapes that are simultaneously unnerving and alluring, defying easy categorization and identification. Bringing her interconnected ecosystems to life for this exhibition through sculptural installations and videos, Mutu encourages audiences to consider these mythical worlds as places for cultural, psychological, and socio-political exploration and transformation. "
                                          -- The Brooklyn Museum

View more here.
Kara Walker


“One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.”
 —Kara Walker 

Kara Walker (American, b. 1969) is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes that examine the underbelly of America's racial and gender tensions. Her works often address such highly charged themes as power, repression, history, race, and sexuality. 

View more here.
Kehinde Wiley 


Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based portrait painter, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of people with brown skin in heroic poses. He will often use old masters paintings for the pose of the figure.

View more here.
Ifetayo


Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to supporting the creative, educational and vocational development of youth and families of African descent in Flatbush, Brooklyn and surrounding communities. Ifetayo was born in the spring of 1989 as a six-week series of free modern dance classes for 50 students. It has since grown to encompass six integrated programs that serve over 2,000 students annually through our on-site academic and literacy training classes, performing, martial and visual arts classes, personal skills development, community development, cultural heritage classes, socially responsible art making and an additional 5,000 youth and families through our affiliated programming and public performances.


Find out more here. 
Alexis Jones - IAspire