Gazing At The Stars by Buhle Nkalashe
This piece by Buhle Nkalashe explores his culture as a South African, it shows a man wearing fabric decorated with traditional South African patterns and is a depiction of the beauty and intricacy of the textiles of South Africa. Buhle Nkalashe explores South African culture in the majority of his pieces, with his portfolio mainly consisting of portraiture of South African people. His work is a beautiful example of how art can be a tool and expression of identity, culture, and the beauty you can find in those things. It's important to note that his portraits focus on Black South Africans, those who where marginalized and discriminated against during Apartheid and had their culture treated as dirty and lesser than. In Buhle's work, you can see the love for and beauty of South Africa's culture, empowered against discrimination.
Portrait Of My Grandmother by Archibald John Motley Jr.
This piece is a portrait done by a Black artist named Archbald John Motley Jr in 1922. The painting shows his grandmother, a woman who had been born into enslavement and who became the matriarch of her family. This painting is an empowering portrait giving the artist's grandmother a sense of dignity and authority, qualities which are often denied to Black women. It is a powerful example of art as a form of empowerment and respect for community, the artist chose to paint someone he loved dearly and who he held a great deal of respect for. This portrait immortalizes the qualities about her he knew well as her grandson and is a beautiful show of how art can be used as a tool for showing love, respect, and recognition of those who live with us in our homes and in our communities.
Self-Love Transformation by Bharathi Dev
This piece is one described by the artist, Bharathi Dev, as being about the transformative and life-changing nature of self-love. Much like a butterfly transforms from a caterpillar to its adult form, self-love can transform your life and change it for the better. This piece is a beautiful demonstration of art as an expression of the nature of an evolving sense of self and the growth of self-love through the symbolism of butterflies. This artist also incorporates her identity as an Indian-American woman and how throughout her lifetime her understanding of herself has changed and been transformed by that aspect of herself, she works to capture the universally everchanging nature of emotion. Her work shows how art can capture both personal and universal narratives about love, beauty, and self-esteem alongside the deep and complex factors that play into these things.
Super Blue Omo by Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Njideka Akunyili Crosby grew up in Nigeria, but in 1999 she moved to the United States. In her work, she attempts to capture the dual nature of her life raised in Nigeria and her life living in America. Her work is people-oriented framing portraits of familiar figures in contexts which can reflect aspects of her childhood, her adulthood, and both of those time periods super-imposed over each other. She captures the immigrant experience and the emotions of leaving one beloved place for another, finding the ghost of these places in each other. Her work is a gorgeous, multi-media exploration of multiple identities intersecting in one person's experience, her work exists as a demonstration of the love for community and home, even when that means loving two places at once. She fully embraces both homes she has known, displaying the vibrancy and mundanity of her lived experiences.