Engaging conversation with artists Dana King, Lezley Saar, Karen Seneferu, moderated by artist and professor, Dr. Ajuan Mance.
Dana King
Throughout her art career, King is known for her sculptures and community projects that revolve around the goal of portraying a political message. One of King's best-known sculptures is her outdoor sculpture dedicated to the memory of the women who led and sustained the Montgomery bus boycott. This sculpture is on display at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice that opened in 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama. This sculpture depicts a teacher, grandma, and pregnant woman who are standing in a triangular formation. Furthermore, King utilized her knowledge gained through journalism to portray these women as if they were from 1950s Alabama. This sculpture of women, according to King, was meant to portray how the women involved were "quiet activists" who were silently making a difference although faced with discrimination. She was recognized as one of "10 Emerging Black Female Artists To Collect" by Black Art in America. King is also an entrepreneur and the owner of a thriving artists’ enclave located in Oakland, California.
Lezley Saar is a mixed-media artist and painter. Her artwork deals with themes of identity, race, gender, beauty, normalcy, and sanity. She has exhibited internationally, and nationally, and her work is included in museum collections such as The Kemper Museum, CAAM, The Ackland Art Museum, and MOCA. She is currently represented by Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles.
Karen Seneferu is one of the most thought-provoking visual artists of our time. Born and raised in Oakland California, her childhood was fed by revolutionary politics and the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and has dedicated her life to working as an educator and artivist. Self-taught in her artistic craft, Senefuru is obsessed with gathering information, imagery, and ideas. As a result, her work contains completeness that belies her brief tenure as a multimedia artist. Using natural and manufactured materials she boldly examines the ancient and contemporary, turning modern objects into artifacts. This Afrifuturistic aesthetic provides a curative intersection between the technological and the spiritual. Senefuru’s is grounded in the philosophy that space has a hidden meaning. Therefore, her work seeks to enter into and transform the meaning of space.
Dr. Ajuan Mance is a Professor of English at Mills College and a lifelong artist and writer. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. In both her scholarly writing and her visual art, Ajuan explores the complexities of race, gender, and identity in the lives of Black people. The creator of the 1001 Black Men online sketchbook, Ajuan has shown her work in exhibitions and festivals from the Bay Area to Brooklyn. Ajuan's comics include the Gender Studies series and the comic strip Check All That Apply. Her comics have also appeared on several media sites and in several anthologies including, most recently, NewYorker.com and the Drawing Power anthology from Abrams Press, winner of the 2020 Eisner award. The 1001 Black Men book will be published in 2021, by Stacked Deck Press.
Professor English and Ethnic Studies / Dean of Digital Learning and Innovation
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