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I chose these artists as they were the leading co-founders of an art movement known as AfriCobra that revolved around creating art that would empower and uplift African Americans. Throughout history, this community has only been painted in a negative light or through a lens that is full of trauma such as racism or slavery. AfriCobra rejects this idea that African Americans can only be portrayed as such and paints them in celebratory ways. Out of all the movements that I have learned throughout my years of art education, the AfriCobra movement is the one that I believe to be the most important to learn about. It’s an art movement that gets little to no recognition and is not talked about enough. As art students, we are only exposed to and taught about art movements that were led by people who are White or of European descent. Due to this, it leaves no room for conversation and a true connection to the art. It also causes upcoming artists to believe that only art created by certain artists is acceptable. As a future art educator, I want this to change and teach my students who come from different backgrounds about art movements and artists who are diverse. I would like to lessen the elitism that occurs in the academic world of art and want my students to feel represented and empowered. The AfriCobra movement is truly a beautiful and powerful movement that can resonate with people. I’ve noticed that art students often have to seek out such movements so I would like to shed a spotlight on Jae and Wadsworth Jarrell.

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Bri Diaz

I chose Lainey Molnar because she gives me hope that there are open minded people out there who see past beauty standards and gender roles and I believe social media needs more open minded people like her. She is not only bold but her illustrations and captions also helped me embrace the beauty of not being tethered to your gender and to remember that we are human first.

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the reason why I choose Martha P.Johnson is i had read something by her that resonated with. I am also fascinated. with drag.

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New York 's "21 Questions" is back with an eye on creative New Yorkers. is an interdisciplinary artist, a writer, and a at the Cooper Union. For nearly 30 years, her work has offered sharp commentary on the power dynamics and politics of cultural representation, war, race, and gender, like the 1992 performance The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, a reenactment of world's-fair ethnographic exhibits that critiques museums, in collaboration with Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Her film Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word - an elegiac video in which Fusco rows a boat around Hart Island and throws flowers into Long Island Sound to honor the people buried in the potter's field - is part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

What's hanging above your couch?
It's something I like very much: a poster by Hélio Oiticica that was used to promote a book by a friend of mine, Irene Small.

What's the first job you had in New York?
I was born here and grew up here, so my first job was babysitting. My first desk job was as a fact-checker for The American Lawyer magazine, and that was pretty horrific. I lasted less than a year. Steve Brill was the editor, and it was a very toxic, repressive environment. I talked to lawyers all day long and discovered how aggressive and argumentative they can be.

What color are you always drawn to?
Let's put it this way: I'm sensitive to the symbolic resonance of colors. There are colors I like but I wouldn't wear, and there are colors I would work with to generate a particular mood. I'm not going to tell you that I love blue. It's not my thing.

I'm working on a video that's based on a story of someone who was imprisoned as a teenager in Cuba for writing a poem in the 1970s. At the prison, there's a cement factory, and everything in the prison is cement: the walls, the ground, everything. How do you create a world in the video that resembles that sort of starkness and grayness? But gray isn't my favorite color.

What work of art or artifact are you most surprised you own?
Most of what I have on my walls are images that have been gifted to me by other artists. Sometimes it's an exchange because I've written for them (I give them an essay; they give me an artwork). Sometimes they've been given to me for my birthday. That's the majority of what I have. The other things on my walls come from research for my curatorial projects.I imagine most of my research might seem strange or obscure to people who are outside the art world or have little exposure to foreign cultures. I would prefer not to subject my home to an exoticizing interpretive paradigm.

Which New Yorker would you want to hang out with?
My son! He's a teenager, and teenagers in general are not interested in their parents. I get to hang out with him a lot less than when he was younger.

What's the last thing you made with your hands?
The kind of art practice that I have is not something that you do with your hands, unless you consider tapping on a computer. I think the question is modeled on an antiquated notion of art-making as being hands-on. This week, I had a lot of writing to do, I had two editing sessions on a film I'm working on, I have three cats to take care of, I cook, I try to keep my house neat, and that's it.

Is there one thing you own multiple versions of?
I have many, many books. I had to stop buying books. On a couple occasions, I have made the mistake of buying the same book twice because I thought I didn't have it. I don't remember any of the specific books, but I'll discover this mistake when I have to pack and move.

Which New York City museum do you always go back to?
I'm more driven by what the exhibition is than the museum it's in. If the museum has something I want to see, then I'll go. If there isn't anything I want to see, I'm not going to go. I like to see art, and I enjoy it, but it's also something I feel like I need to do because I am an artist. It helps me orient my interests and understand what is happening in art. It also helps me to teach because it gives me a broader frame of reference. I go to the Whitney, MoMA, the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, and sometimes smaller entities like Dia or the Morgan Library, depending on what's on.

What do you always have next to your computer?
A legal pad. I write things down a lot: lists, outlines of essays. I have a stack of legal pads on my desk.

Where is the best view of the city?
My 60th birthday fell during the first months of the pandemic, and nobody wanted to meet up, and they couldn't be in an enclosed space. All my dreams of having had a big celebration were kind of made impossible, so I decided to rent a sailboat to sail around Manhattan. It was a beautiful evening ride with my son and two close friends and their children. Because of the pandemic, there was virtually no commerce on the water, so the sea was completely still and quiet. It was an extraordinary evening. And the view of the city was amazing.

Which building or object do you want to redesign every time you see it?
There are buildings I think are eyesores, or just not where I would want to live, even if I think they're interesting-looking. All the glass buildings along the West Side Highway that are part of the hedge-fund-billionaire expansion of the West Village, Tribeca, and downtown - I would never want to live so exposed or be in a glass house like that. It looks pretty from the outside, but I can't imagine trying to inhabit a space like that.

What's one thing you would change about your field?
The polarization of wealth in the art world. I don't think it's more grotesquely polarized than the rest of the American economy, but the fact that New York has become unbearably expensive and there are oppressively low salaries for entry-level arts professionals makes for a really hostile work environment for young people. It's a major deterrent to diversifying the field. It's economically very undemocratic and unsustainable for people who are not independently wealthy.

If you could live anywhere in New York City, where would it be?
I would've liked to be in Soho or Tribeca in the late '60s and 1970s, when it was all inhabited by artists who were not interested or focused on selling artwork but on making work for each other. It was a really fertile period for the avant-garde.

What would you hoard if it stopped being produced?
Books and films. I survived the pandemic because I could read a lot of books and watch a lot of films.

What do you do to get out of a creative rut?
Sometimes I look at art or I see a play or performance. Sometimes it's exercise, and I'll go to a dance class or the gym. I try to break it up, eat, breathe, sleep well, see other things to get stimulated, and get back to work. Last week, I saw Camille Norment's sound installations at the Dia Art Foundation. I thought they were very elegant and very beautiful.

Where was your first NYC apartment, and how much was the rent?
The first place I lived outside of home was an apartment on Bank Street I shared with somebody who had a rent-controlled lease, so it was really cheap. I think the rent was like $500 a month, and we split it fifty-fifty. I left it in 1987 and found an apartment in what is now East Williamsburg. It was like $475, or something like that, a month. I had a lot of space for that much money, and that meant that I didn't have to work full time. I worked three days a week, and the rest of the time I pursued my interests.

Where in the city do you go to be alone?
I have a lot of privacy at home because it's just me and my son. I do spend a lot of time alone, so it's not like I have to struggle to find solitude.

What's the worst piece of career advice you've ever gotten?
It's hard to say what the worst is, but maybe I can say the most inappropriate. I'm the child of immigrants. My mother was widowed when I was a child. She really put a lot of emphasis on stability, respectability, and financial security. She wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor - one of these very conventional things. And she really didn't support my interest in the arts. She would say that if I stayed in the arts that I was just "gonna end up unemployed, drinking cappuccinos on the Lower East Side." That's a literal phrase she used once that I never forgot. I didn't end up unemployed, and I don't live on the Lower East Side now 'cause it's too expensive!

What have you given away to someone that you wish you could get back?
I've wasted time on people that I shouldn't have.

What's your favorite NYC restaurant and regular order?
I don't eat out very much. I don't make a lot of money, and I don't want to spend it on restaurants unless I absolutely have to.

What descriptive phrase do you want on your obit headline?
I get a lot of questions, when I do public talks, about, "Well, what about the audience and what do you want the audience to think?" and "What do you want people to think of you?" And I'm like, Look, I'm not an authoritarian ruler. I cannot control what people think about me or what I do. They will do what they will do. They will think what they will think. After I'm dead, I won't be able to respond. I can say a lot of things and then some New York Times journalist will come and make mincemeat out of it - you know what I mean? So why waste my time?

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Coco Fusco's Best View of the City Was From a Birthday Boat Ride

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Coco Fusco, the radical artist and educator, speaks about unaffordability in New York, the West Village as a bohemian enclave, and the polarization of wealth in the art world. Her film Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word is in the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

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I chose Patrisse Cullors because of her role as one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Movement, as well as her abolitionist work in Los Angeles jails. I think she is one of the key figures in modern activism, and the legacy of her work echoes in todays activist movements.

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I chose to research Los Angeles born artist Nery Gabriel Lemus for my presentation. Lemus is a visual artist, educator and MFA director. Some of the issues he explores in his work are immigration, ethic stereotyping, and family. I chose Lemus because I am interested in learning more about the issues he addresses and seeing how he communicates visually.

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I chose Tania Bruguera because she is a very interesting artist. She does performance political art. Her work is very bold and she goes all out to get her point across with her artwork. All the time and planing she does to make each performance the way she wants to I find astonishing.

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Adrian Piper is a well-known conceptual artist famous for her thought-provoking work on race, gender, and identity. Born in New York City in 1948, Piper has been practicing art for over five decades, working across diverse media such as drawing, painting, performance, video, and installation. One of her most famous pieces is "My Calling (Card) #1" (1986-1990), a small card that says: "Dear Friend, I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past, I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance." Piper's art makes people think about uncomfortable topics like racism and forces them to consider their beliefs and biases. I chose to discuss Adrian Piper because her groundbreaking work in conceptual art confronts societal norms and addresses complex issues of race, gender, and identity with thought-provoking and challenging pieces that continue to inspire and provoke audiences worldwide.

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Hank Willis Thomas is an activist artist who uses popular American culture and imagery as a tool to speak on issues considering race, identity, and representation. He especially focuses on the image and representation of Black people in mainstream media and advertisement, and how Black bodies are used in consumer culture and marketing strategies. Thomas is incredibly active in his community and not only advocates for justice within his own community as a Black man, but he also advocates for the liberation and justice for all marginalized communities. I always appreciate and gravitate towards those who have great love and care for our future as a people because revolutionary optimism matters in sustaining our fight.

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The artist I chose is Emory Douglas because of his graphic, bold and illustrative style. He created posters and newspapers for the black panther party and is considered one of the most influential and radical poltical artist during the civil rights era. His design aesthetic is charcterized by its bold and illustrative style, bright colors, black lines and photo montage. His work captured the liberation movements of the time and called for the end of oppression and subjugation of Black, Indigenous and other communities.

-Hailey Cisneros

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The artist chosen for the activist artist assignment is Jacob Lawrence. He was an American painter who created art pieces portraying African American historical subjects and contemporary life. His art style is "dynamic cubism" which is the use of very bold vibrant colors, geometric forms, and overlapping planes. With all these techniques he incorporated African American culture and its history into his works. The bold colors and unique abstract storytelling caught my eye, which is why I have chosen Jacob Lawrence. Abstract art to me is like almost building a puzzle while reading and looking into the art. His color choices with every piece compliment each other so well.

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I chose La Pocha Nostra because of their depictions of Mexican/Chicano culture and his contributions on debates of border culture, north/south relations, and cultural, gender and generational diversity. Their performances, photographs and other works fill me with a new sense of a familiarity as they showcase aspects of Mexican culture and historical events affecting us but in a visually striking way.

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I chose Faith Ringgold because of her unique style of quilting, combined with painting and stories to address issues of race, gender, and social justice. She has also done performance art, writing, and teaching, making her a very well rounded artist whose done a little of everything.

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Elizabeth Catlett was a renowned American and Mexican artist celebrated for her sculptures and prints, particularly those depicting African American women. Born in Washington, DC, to a family with a legacy of enslavement, she faced racial barriers in her education, ultimately graduating from Howard University in 1935 with a degree in Art. Despite initial setbacks, she pursued her passion and became the first woman to earn a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her masterpiece, "Negro Mother and Child," garnered acclaim at the 1940 Chicago American Negro Exposition, embodying her commitment to portraying the strength and dignity of black women in her art. I chose this artist because her work seems interesting and what she stands for.

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Barbara Jones-Hogu's art is bold, bright, and demands attention. I chose her as the activist Artist because of her integral part in the AfriCOBRA movement. She graphically depicts African figures with the use of printmaking, and every part of her image has a meaning, and the longer you look at one, the more you can find.

I also recommend this interview by Rebecca Zorach. She and Jones-Hogu went through some of her most promoted work and discussed her processes and experiences in the black panther and afriCOBRA movement.

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I chose Ai Wei Wei because of his stance against the Chinese government and how he portrays it through art. He investigated the corruption of the government multiple times and their cover-ups and was arrested for tax evasion. He made multiple videos, sculptures, architecture, books and music to show his experience with the Chinese government.

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I have chosen Lauren Woods because she is a multimedia artist whose hybrid media projects that extends from film, to video and sound installations, interventions and site-specific work, engages in history while observing the social politics of the current time to critique structures of power. Her main research goes over racial histories in the built environment through monument and memorial work.

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I chose Dorothea Lange because when I was younger, I visited a museum which had her work on exhibit and was very touched by the life she brought out in her photos and subjects she captured.

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I choose Suzanne Lacy because she is a feminist artist and social activist. As a Sociology major, this peaks my interest in how to intertwine art making practices into the community; not just for pleasure but to advocate for social change.

-Jessie Welch

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I chose Jenny Holzer because I’ve seen her work in person, and I was astonished by her eerie installation in such a small, quiet, white room lite up by her piece. The message behind her art is to blur the line between public and personal spaces, leaving no room for information, especially governmental secrets of there wrongdoings for all to see, in bright single lines.

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I chose Andrea Bowers because she includes a certain element to present women. The way the subject’s posed is alluring especially when she adds a background or element to give the art an impactful display. She is an eco-artist and feminist artist who reuses cardboards to create her canvas then paints over them.

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I chose Patrisse Cullors because I did wait until the last minute and had few options left however she resonated with me the most. She is a blm activist as well as an lgbtq rights activist therefore she advocates for my rights as a person of the black community as well as a person of the lgbtq community.

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I chose Jae and Wadsworth Jarrell. I chose these two because of how their art is able to deliver strong and positive messages for black communities. I also like how they deliver these messages through very unique and colorful art works.

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I chose Faith Ringgold because she is known for her narrative quilts, along with her paintings and sculptures. Her work often discusses her experience with racism, sexism, segregation while growing up in Harlem. She also creates art to advocate for important causes such as women's rights, Civil rights movement and prison abolishment movement.

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The person I chose is Elizabeth Catlett an African American sculptor and print maker. Her artwork focused on the experiences of women African American in the 20th century. I had little information about this person before I researched about her. Her work is mainly abstract and figurative forms, which I think gives expression through small presentation.  She was influenced through both African and Mexican artistic traditions. Her work pushed the boundary of real social life of African Americans. I am excited to learn more about her

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Why did I choose Shaun Leonardo? Well, I did wait till last minute so I didn’t have many choices to pick from at this point. I am excited nevertheless to do more research on Shaun and see what his work entails.

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When originally looking at the list I was tor between who I wanted to research but finally landed on the group La Pocha Nostra who is lead by Guillermo Gomez-Peña. The group is a trans disciplinary performance activist group who are in their words radical performers, they are on a mission to remove borders of everything, gender, race, generational gaps and more importantly message communities together for their should be piece. Government doesn’t seem to be an important key in their perfect world and that much I admire. I also loved they why they incorporate Spanglish in their presentations which reaches a far more younger audience as well. It’s a group that seems to have passion that goes beyond making stuff they love but art that’ll make a change reguardless of consequence. -Evelyn Barajas

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I chose Jacob Lawrence, an African American painter who focused on the African American experience including the civil rights movement, The Haitian revolution, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass. His style is know as dynamic cubism which caught my eye as a unique style to portray this narrative, his art has made a lasting impression on the art of America and tells the story of African Americans in a way that weaves it into the fabric of Americas’ history.

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Lauren Woods “Whites Only” water fountain.

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I chose Lauren Woods because she is a contemporary artist who is connecting the past to current times.  Her sculptures usually involve an element of the civil rights movement while utilizing video and or technology. Her art is a showing of past racism and prejudice while juxtaposing it with current affairs.

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I had chosen Emory Douglas who was integral to the Black Panthers due to his leadership and artistic expression through graphic design which I'm majoring in as well but I don't think it processed on the spreadsheet because of my bad internet. So, I'm going with Barbara Jones-Hogu who I'm not any less interested in considering they both contributed greatly toward the empowerment of the black community. In fact, Barbara Jones-Hogu is the founder of afriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). She was a painter and printmaker which are two mediums that I'd love to be more knowledgeable about. What better to learn from someone who fought for not only colored people and their civil rights but for women as well. She created art that was black-orientated and represented unity, inclusive to the black community finally giving them representation.
Garrett G. Gonzalez

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I chose Lemus because he captures the experience of being BIPOC in especially the LA area. He twists such simple nostalgic memories with an aesthetic that captures the social economic struggles we face in America. He focused mainly on objects that are familiar to those from a Latinx background and addresses immigration issues. He’s created an interesting contrast between content like poverty, abuse, and neglect with a colorful palette that give the message of hope despite the conditions one is in.

Ariana Tabler

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I chose Gregory Sales because his work in social practice sounded familiar and I was curious to further any research on his collaboration in the future ID project. His commitment to these long term projects are very transformative to many participants and their lives. His creative practices is what tackles injustices within our society, which he has recently spoken on the issues of mass incarceration. Various publications of Sales’s work have made changes within the community, especially the future ID project in Alcatraz. - Mauricio Paredes

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Dorothea Lange 1895-1965

This photograph is entitled Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. It was taken in 1936 and since then has become the image of America’s Great Depression. The Photographer was Dorothea Lange. At the time she was working with a government program to raise awareness of the struggling farms across the country. Within less than a month of this photo being published, the California State Relief Administration delivered over 2,00 food rations to the farmer of Nipomo. During World War II, Lange photographed the internment of Japanese American. Lange was strongly against this policy and wished to use her photographs to humanize the people interned. Unfortunately the US government suppressed the photos while the war was going on. Within her lifetime Dorthea Lange also worked on documenting displacement of families in Putah Creek and Documenting how low income people were treated in the court system.

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https://hammer.ucla.edu/take-it-or-leave-it/artists/adrian-piper
I chose Adrian Piper because I had not heard of her before and I was interested in the idea of conceptual art. Her artwork confronts the viewer and asks them to examine their own racist biases through their reactions to her work. The image on this post is from Piper’s installation called Cornered, in which she explores what it means to identify as Black and be white-passing, and how most white Americans have Black ancestry and what they will choose to do with that information. It reminds me of the book I’m currently reading called The Vanishing Half, about two sisters who grow up to live very different lives, one living as a Black woman and the other living as a white woman, hiding her heritage from her white husband. I’m interested in researching these topics more as I continue to learn about Piper’s work and read the book.
- Micah Coble

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I chose Marsha "Pay it no Mind" Johnson for my artist because, as a queer person myself, she is extremely important to my community, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't know much more than the surface level facts about her and would love to know more. I also am extremely interested in drag culture and I can use this assignment as an excuse to learn more about it as a whole.
- Allison Arterberry

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I chose Andrea Bowers because her work focuses about women's rights and nature which are things that resonate with me. I also find her neon sign work to be very unique and fun to look at. I don't know of many artists who do work in neon signs. Also, for her paintings she uses cardboard scraps instead of a traditional canvas. This fits with her climate related works because she uses recycled materials instead of buying a new canvas. I had never heard of her before but I find her work interesting and would like to continue to research her.
- Olivia Wicks

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Jacob Lawrence is the artist I chose because I have always loved the way he uses series of paintings to create a narrative of historical events and shared cultural experiences. I am also interested to learn more about his process because I think the flat colors of paint he uses are really amazing and the simple style of his paintings are extremely effective at telling a different kind of historical narrative that is of the people. Jacob Lawrence was a member of the Harlem community and also attended Black Mountain College which was an arts school that was only open for a short time that I would also like to further research.

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I have chosen Emory Douglas because of his leadership within the Black Panther Party. My understanding of the party is that I hear about them in many disciplines, but because Toni Morrison was spoken about in my classes I now want to know more about the organization and Douglas who's artwork is regarded as revolutionary and goes against oppression. Angela Davis is a figure that he worked with that makes me want to learn more about his role in the movement.