17 Artists To Fire You Up When Things Look Bleak

Multimedia artist Alicia Henry manipulates textiles to create haunting images that explore identity and family relationships. Mark Scala of the Carl Hammer Gallery describes her as "an anti-portraitist, who depicts the exterior façade as a shield protecting aspects of the self that will always remain hidden beneath the surface, or that may indeed be absent."

Of the piece above, Kim Drew adds, "I just really love it because it is something that is equally horrifying and absolutely gorgeous."

Photographer Awol Erizku, born in Addis Ababa and raised in the Bronx, asks viewers to question their understanding of art history by centering black subjects in Western art. He's also known for treating his Instagram like a museum, with set hours during which his account is available for public consumption. In a recent Vulture article, he says, "Art talk can be too much sometimes, and I just want to have an alternative way to communicate...that’s maybe more digestible and enjoyable.”

Kara Walker made a name for herself in the art world with her series of silhouettes called Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, from 1994. Her work deals with the often violent intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in black female identity.

She gained more mainstream recognition for her on-site "sugar baby" installation masterwork in Brooklyn, NY called, "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" from 2014. The piece's full title makes the statement completely clear: "an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant."

Carrie Mae Weems received the 2013 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work in photography - what she's best known for - as well as video and multimedia. In The Kitchen Table Series (1990), she casts herself and others in photos that feature intimate portraits of black female life, featuring card-playing, make-up-applying, and man-feeding.

Sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett's work was deeply influenced by her early life in the segregated South and by her later life in Mexico City. After being denied admission to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, she studied at Howard University, and created pieces that reflected civil rights struggles in the US, and the labor movement in Mexico.

Let’s take it back old-school for a sec and pay some due respect to Augusta Savage. She was a sculptor whose work during the Harlem Renaissance attracted big-name subjects like Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Du Bois.

Her dedication to her art brought her to NY with less than five dollars in her pocket in the 1920s, leading her to eventually influence a whole generation of Harlem artists as a teacher and director of the Harlem Community Art Center. She was also the first black woman member of the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.

Hank Willis Thomas’s visceral work takes on the co-opting of black male bodies in advertising and pop culture. His bold reimagining of the Nike logo as a branded scar on a man’s bare skin will make you feel some things. In an interview with Artspace, he said "I think about how hype creates history, and how many people there are who did so much to affect how we think, how we create, how we evolved, but whose stories we'll never know because they weren't cool. And I'm always surprised when I learn about someone to realize how much I'm caught up in the hype and not really thinking about the depth." Preach, Hank.

The man who brought us Shaft was an artist of many talents. Gordon Parks trail blazed the way for black photographers, becoming the first African-American to shoot for Vogue and Life. He was also a composer and writer, in addition to being a photographer and filmmaker. He wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of The Learning Tree and became the first black person to direct a major motion picture.

Phoebe Boswell is a half-Kenyan, half-British visual artist whose work deals with her struggle to define home. She spent her formative years in Oman and Bahrain, and now makes art in London. Her formal experiments include moving picture installations like “The Matter of Memory,” which was exhibited at the Carroll/Fletcher Gallery in London and her work is currently a part of a curated film project called African Diaspora Artists in the 21st Century that's commissioned by the Cultural Institute at King’s College, and her short film Dear Mr Shakespeare is being featured at this year's Sundance festival!

Emory Douglas is a total badass. He was the official Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, using art to critique racism in America with the goal of speaking to the largest audience possible. He used his background in printmaking to create engaging protest art that was mass-produced and circulated through the Black Panthers' eponymous newspaper. In November of 2016 he told ArtForum "In terms of change, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. It’s psychological warfare we’re dealing with, and movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street come out of repression and exploitation." Clearly, he hasn't stopped fighting.

Mickalene Thomas’ gorgeous mixed-media portraits use collage to navigate the fractured sense of self that often accompanies discussions around race and beauty. In her work, you can see her thinking through what it means to feel beautiful as a black woman. If you live in New Orleans, get your booty to the Newcomb Art Museum to see her work, including her latest collaboration with Solange Knowles!