Beyond Beauty

A’Driane Nieves was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1982. A visual artist and writer, A’Driane Nieves founded Tessera Arts Collective, an arts nonprofit, in 2018, and subsequently launched an art magazine. Nieves is a self-taught painter of over a decade. At the urging of her therapist, she began using painting as a form of…

Through her dynamic, celebratory quilted portraits of people of African decent , Bisa Butler (b. 1973, Orange, NJ) investigates the purposes and potential of portraiture within the Black historical narrative. Butler’s influences range widely from personal family scrapbooks to American folk traditions and AfriCOBRA philosophies. Although her finished works are made entirely of textiles, Butler…

Season 1 Reflections: Celebrating Voices and StoriesIn this special episode, I look back on the incredible journey of Beyond Beauty Season 1, highlighting the powerful conversations with Global women artists who shared their creative practices, personal stories, and bold visions for the future. From exploring themes of identity and resilience to celebrating the transformative power…

Photo credit Carolyne Teston Candice Hoyes is an artist of “chill-inducing range” (Vogue) across genre, medium and style. In 2024, Hoyes made her Lincoln Center composer debut in “Sadah Espii Proctor’s adrift” which is the first augmented reality installation in the Social Sculptures Project, a series of public art exhibitions. Upcoming debuts in 2024-25 season…

Photo: Mike Vitelli  Kennedy Yanko (b. 1988, St. Louis, MO) is a sculptor and installation artist working in found metal and paint skin. Yanko deploys her materials in ways that explore the limitations of optic vision, underlining the opportunities we miss when looking with eyes alone. Her methods reflect a dual abstract expressionist-surrealist approach that…

Photo Credit: Chez Awachie Ifeanyi Awachie is a Nigeria-born, Atlanta-raised writer, filmmaker, and scholar. She is a PhD Candidate in Cinema Studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her dissertation research is on transnational Nigerian women’s video installations. She is the writer and director of This Thing Is Not for You (2022), produced by…

Adebunmi Gbadebo is a multimedia artist who uses culturally and historically imbued materials to investigate the complexities between land, matter, and memory on various sites of slavery. Centering on deeply resonant materials like indigo dye, soil hand dug from plantations, and human Black hair collected throughout the diaspora. The resulting works tend to carry the…

Few artists understand metamorphosis as keenly as Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan. Long invested in interrogating the gender-biased customs that impact the condition of women in Saudi Arabia, AlDowayan is a sensitive yet critical witness to the cultural metamorphosis engulfing the Kingdom. Her practice, formally speaking, regularly shifts and evolves—from the assertive black and white photographic…

Minne Atairu is a researcher and interdisciplinary artist interested in generative artificial intelligence. Utilizing AI-mediated processes, and materials, Minne’s artistic practice is dedicated to illuminating understudied gaps and absences within Black historical archives. Minne’s academic research focuses on Generative AI ,Art and Educational policy in urban K-12 Art classrooms. Minne has exhibited at The Shed,…

Photo credit : Steph Murray Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of outdoor project space The Franklin. Soto instigates meaningful, relevant, and often difficult conversations surrounding socioeconomic and cultural oppression, erasure of history, and loss of cultural knowledge. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, and now immersed in her Chicago…