Cross-Cultural Conversations

Cross-Cultural Conversations: African Americans and Africans Speak

Facilitator: Beverly Aarons

Beverly Aarons is a multi-disciplinary artist, journalist, and the publisher of Artists Up Close. She works across disciplines exploring the intersections of history, hidden realities, and imagined future worlds.

“As part of my artist-in-residence with WOW Gallery, I facilitated a series of 3 conversations between African American and African artists designed to heal internalized racial trauma, educate across cultural boundaries, foster ancestral reconnection through artistic expression, and liberate artists from cultural misunderstandings and constraints.  I hope you enjoy listening to these conversations.”

Participants 

Mpho Mokgatlhe, a powerful South African pottery artist whose work is in remembrance of ancient Africa in the modern age. 

Esther Ervin,  a visual artist, sculptor, and jewelry artist whose works reference the natural world and sometimes pays homage to her heritage by referencing the iconography of her ancestors.

Gerard Miller, a Black, non-binary, queer community educator, fiber artist, and aspiring Ancestor. Central to Gerard’s vision is amplifying the voices and experiences of the most marginalized folx in society, reflecting their own African and Tsalagi heritage as well as their queer identity.

Lebogang Mokgatlhe, a self-taught artist/beader who works with glass and wooden beads to create decorative wall art and jewelry. She draws most of her inspiration from shapes, symbols, languages, and colours from the earliest forms of beadwork, basketry, and hut decorations throughout Africa. 

Usen Obot is an acclaimed whose works reference institutionalized age-old African systems of governance, religion, administration, spirituality and community cohesion.

Moses Sun is an interdisciplinary artist who fuses hip-hop, jazz, afro-futurism, and the black southern diaspora of his childhood into a mix of visuals that blurs the lines between digital and analog art.