As we enter International Black Women’s History Month, Black art has always been a means of documenting and creating history, putting out powerful stories that depict Black women’s experiences, struggles, and triumphs. BLACK ENTERPRISE has chosen 19 Black women visual artists to honor and recognize their transformative work and re-echo the need for their artistic voices in the broader cultural landscape.
Betye Saar
Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an African American artist who works in assemblage. Saar’s work is dedicated to undoing racial stereotypes and creating new representations of Black identity, spirituality, and feminism. The artist was born in Los Angeles and has worked since the 1960s, making powerful, mixed-media works like “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972),” which takes back racist imagery. Saar uses found objects to relate forgotten stories and to deal with social themes. A key member of the Black Arts Movement and a presence in contemporary art, her artwork has been exhibited in institutions like MoMA.
Faith Ringgold
Faith Ringgold is an African American artist, author, and activist who worked on narrative quilts, paintings, and children’s books about race, gender, and social justice. A Harlem-born artist, Ringgold started making art in the 1960s and was actively involved in the civil rights and feminist movements. Her story quilts, including “Tar Beach (1988),” show how fabric can be used in storytelling. Ringgold’s books celebrate Black culture. Ringgold’s work has been exhibited in major institutions like the Guggenheim and Smithsonian.
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Born in Philadelphia and based in Paris for most of her life, African American artist, sculptor, and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud sold her first piece, “Reba,” to the MoMA in 1955. Chase-Riboud is best known for her bronze and fiber sculptures, especially her Malcolm X series. From history, identity, and power, her work strikes a chord. As a celebrated author, Chase-Riboud is best known for “Sally Hemings (1977),” a fictionalized account of the life of the enslaved girl who bore children for Thomas Jefferson.
Howardena Pindell
Howardena Pindell is an African American artist who works in mixed media, and her pieces are always political in some way, dealing with race, feminism, and social justice. Employing means as diverse as hole-punched paper, glitter, and fabric, Pindell makes abstract paintings that raise particular political points. Her 1980 video, “Free, White and 21,” targets racism and sexism. A Philadelphia native, she attended Boston University and Yale and eventually served as a curator at MoMA in New York. Her work has been shown internationally, contributing new perspectives to the field and giving a voice to the marginalized.
Augusta Savage
A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Augusta Savage (1892-1962), an African American sculptor. “The Harp” was inspired by “Lift Every Voice and Sing” but was later destroyed after its exhibition. Savage trained artists like Jacob Lawrence at the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts she set up in Harlem, making the artist the first person to open a gallery for African American art. Savage was born in Florida but worked primarily in New York, using her stature to fight racism and champion Black artists. Her legacy lives on in her art.
Kara Walker
Kara Walker uses black cut-paper silhouettes and installations to explore race, gender, and power. She was born in Stockton, California, and started to get recognition in the 1990s. Her work includes pieces like “A Subtlety,” a sphinx sculpture made of sugar that addresses slavery and oppression in America. Walker’s art, which has been shown in big institutions like MoMA and the Tate Modern, tells uncomfortable truths about the brutality and contradictions of race and power in the U.S.
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson (born 1960) is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in photography, video, and other forms of installation to address issues of race, gender, and identity. Coming up in the 1980s, she combined photographs of black women with text to challenge stereotypes. Her work, which has been shown at MoMA, the Whitney, and Tate Modern, has moved into painting and film. Simpson uses mixed media and fractured narratives to discuss identity and representation.
Simone Leigh
Simone Leigh’s art consists mainly of sculptures and installations. Her works always concern Black women, their history, and their experience and strength. She is from Chicago and based in New York. Leigh uses ceramics and bronze and has already been recognized internationally. She represented the USA at the 2022 Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion. Leigh’s practice consists of reclaiming traditional craft practices.
Mickalene Thomas
Mickalene Thomas was born in New Jersey and is a contemporary artist who paints, collages, and photographs of Black women, beauty, and identity in vibrant rhinestone-adorned works. Thomas is based in Brooklyn and has been active since the early 2000s, with work exhibited at MoMA, the Whitney, and the Smithsonian, among others. Thomas reimagines Black femininity through the lens of 1970s aesthetics, classical painting, and personal history, challenging beauty standards and societal narratives. Thomas created the first individual portrait of first lady Michelle Obama in 2008. Her art reflects power, sexuality, and representation in the representation of Black women in art and culture.
Latoya Ruby Frazier
LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photographer and visual artist who focuses on racial and economic inequality. In her photography, video, and performance, she documents environmental racism and healthcare disparities in working-class Black communities. Her well-known work, “The Notion of Family,” shows the challenges of her hometown and her own family. Frazier’s artwork has graced the spaces of institutions like MoMA and the Whitney Museum.
Nina Chanel Abney
Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings are bold and graphic. The artist paints themes on race, politics, gender, and pop culture. She makes large-scale, bright-colored paintings with collage, flattened figuration, and abstraction. When consuming Abney’s work, viewers are forced to engage with issues of racial injustice and media influence. She has shown at the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
Tschabalala Self
Tschabalala Self is a Harlem-born artist. Her work is marked by the vibrant, mixed-media pieces she paints and the Black femininity she celebrates and disrupts. A relatively new artist from the 2010s, Self has exhibited in major institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem. Self paints Black womanhood as multifaceted and complex.
Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American painter. She was born in Addis Ababa and raised in the U.S. Her large-scale abstract paintings are layered with architectural elements, maps, and expressive marks. Her work addresses themes of history and power, and she uses dynamic compositions to think through questions of globalization and social movements.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born artist based in Los Angeles. She is known for her painting techniques that combine Nigerian and Western aesthetics. She creates intimate, domestic scenes filled with themes of identity, migration, and cultural blending. Crosby was brought up in Nigeria and has studied in the U.S. and has made her appearance in museums such as the Whitney Museum and Tate Modern. Her work is a testimony to the challenge of African stereotypes, the immigrant experience, globalization, memory, and cultural exchange.
Jordan Casteel
Jordan Casteel is best known for her large-scale portraits of everyday Black life. Born in Denver and based in New York City, she paints street vendors, family members, and community members with rich color and expressive brushwork. Active since the early 2010s, her work has been exhibited at museums like the MoMA, the New Museum, and the Met. Casteel’s work is about Black identity and the connection between people.
Brittney Leeanne Williams
Brittney Leeanne Williams is an artist from Pasadena, California, best known for painting women contorting. Williams is more than just a painter; she uses her art to tell stories about Black womanhood, trauma, love, and resilience by using the body as an emotional and physical landscape. Major galleries across the U.S. and internationally have displayed her work.
Deborah Roberts
Deborah Roberts is a collagist. Her art features mixed-media collages concerned with race, identity, beauty, and Black youth. Roberts’ work interrogates beauty standards and the pressures on Black bodies, using Black children’s images combined with abstraction. From Austin, Texas, Roberts is recognized for her surreal collage practice, and her art is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Jennifer Packer
Jennifer Packer paints about love, loss, and vulnerability. She combines the traditional techniques of painting people’s portraits and using abstract forms and shapes while painting people’s close moments with their families and friends. She is famous for using color and texture to create emotional pieces. Packer’s art centers the Black body.
Jadé Fadojutimi
Jadé Fadojutimi is a British-Nigerian artist, who paints large-scale, colourful abstract art. Her work addresses identity, emotion, and the complexities of self. Her paintings are a blend of Western and African influences. Fadojutimi’s art touches on personal histories and global influence.
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