Artist Category: Exhibited

Born in Gondar, Ethiopia, in 1988, Awol Erizku is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, film, sculpture and installation, creating a new vernacular that bridges the gap between African and African American visual culture. Erizku’s work refers to subjects as diverse as art history, hip-hop, and spirituality, rejecting Eurocentric notions of art and beauty in favour of building an Afrocentric aesthetic, something he refers to as “Afro-esotericism.” With a distinctive emphasis on reclaiming and reinterpreting historical narratives within a contemporary context, Erizku’s work challenges viewers to reconsider conventional perspectives on art and society through a lens that merges personal narrative with broader socio-political commentary.

Erizku received a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, in 2010, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, in 2014. Erizku’s work has been exhibited at prominent institutions including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The Studio Museum, Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; FLAG Art Foundation, New York; and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah. Erizku also brings high concept to commercial photography highlighting cultural and creative leaders for publications such as The New Yorker, New York Magazine, GQ and Vanity Fair. Erizku’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; By Art Matters, Hangzhou Contemporary Art Museum, Hangzhou; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah.

Daniel Obasi’s works birth a certain idealism to Afrocentric concepts; whimsical, soft yet powerfully contrasting with sharp silhouettes, colours and stories. Attracted to old cinema and afro futurism, Nigerian born Artist is deeply concerned with advancing the scope of African narratives.Gradually developing a heartfelt style that lures viewers into an ever evolving imagination; 23 years old Obasi’s first encounter with art started in the year 2012 as an interning graphic designer at a security company “for me graphics design has a certain discipline that is devoid of any from creative limitations, you can basically create anything as long as your mind can contain it”. With his heart set on studying advertising and media Daniel applied to the University of Lagos where he ended up studying French. While in university he worked first as a freelance art and fashion writer for ours magazine and Fashion Business Africa.

Taking a long shot into fashion styling, Daniel Obasi interned as a fashion assistant briefly before taking on editorial projects during his second year in university. From styling small campaigns and look books for upcoming brands to taking on major brands such as Maxivive, Rayo, Orange culture and Vlisco. His works have been featured on Oxosi, Nataal, Maire Claire, Hunger Magazine, Kaltbult, Indie Magazine, Disorder magazine uk, CNN Africa, vsco, Afropunk, Okay africa, ID magazine etc. Obasi has also done three fashion films under his art direction; Embers of Bloom, illegal, and Vlisco: An Alien in Town. Consistently working and drawing inspiration from his city Lagos Nigeria, Daniel is famous for exploring subject matters like sexuality, masculinity, beauty, cultural symbolism, Afrocentric fantasy and human relations. Today Daniel Obasi works in Lagos as a freelance stylist, photographer and art director curating presentations as well as film projects.

Justen Leroy, a multidisciplinary artist and curator from Los Angeles, explores the intersections of sound, spirituality, and geology in his music, film, and performance work. His practice investigates how these traditions connect with broader cultural and environmental themes. In 2022, Leroy debuted his first solo exhibition at the California African American Museum, Lay Me Down in Praise, a three-channel film and sound installation that examines the current climate crisis. The work has since been shown at the Dak’Art 2024 Biennale in Dakar, Senegal and the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it became part of their permanent collection. In 2023, he premiered X’ene’s Witness at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles—a genre-blending opera that combines classical music, electronic sound, and choreography to provoke dialogue around climate change.In 2020, Leroy’s work was featured in the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA 2020 biennial. In 2022, he co-curated the exhibition Noah Davis at the Underground Museum, an organization where he held multiple roles over six years.

Currently, Leroy serves as the first Director of Public Programs and Community Outreach at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA). In this role, he led the creation of MOCA culture:LAB, a platform designed to support cultural production and experimentation through collaboration and collective imagination, engaging the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and beyond.

Diana “Didi” Rojas (b. 1993) is known for her ceramic footwear sculptures. Shoes are the vessels that carry people through the world and are self portraits of their wearers. Her work aims to tackle the significance that people place on objects in a society driven by consumerism. Rojas has shown her work nationally in galleries, fairs, and museums, and has collaborated with established brands, including Adidas, Gucci, Nike, Tory Burch and Vogue.

Patricia Renee’ Thomas is a painter, researcher, and educator based in Philadelphia with a BFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture and an MFA from University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. She has exhibited in several Museums, including The DuSable Black History Museum in Chicago, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, PA, The Delaware Contemporary Museum in Wilmington, DE and the Susquehanna Museum of Art in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Thomas has exhibited with galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Lagos, Nigeria and Koln, Germany. She was a 2025 McMillian Stewart Chair of Painting Fellow and Visiting Professor at Maryland Institute College of Art, a 2021 recipient of the Meyer Family Award for Contemporary Art, and a 2021 recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. Thomas teaches Painting and Drawing at University of Pennsylvania and is currently Visiting Faculty at Penn State University.

Instagram sensation Dan Lam’s tactile, technicolor sculptures use unconventional materials to playfully tread a line between allure and repulsion. Made of painted polyurethane foam and often covered in spikes, her blob-like pieces that appear to melt and drip have brought Lam hordes of social media fans.Lam began experimenting with the possibilities of foam after receiving her MFA from Arizona State University, and she has continued to test its limits by scaling up. While her pieces appear otherworldly, Lam steadily draws inspiration from the everyday, taking cues from nature and the human body.

Curtiss Randolph (Toronto) is a lens-based artist working in photography and film. Having grown up in theatre environments, the elements of stage production are influential to his practice. Randolph uses traditional analogue photography to experiment with non-linear forms of personal storytelling. Randolph holds a Bachelor of Photography from Toronto Metropolitan University (2018).

Native Art Department International (NADI) is a collaborative long-term project created and administered by Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan that began in Brooklyn in 2016 and is now based in Toronto. NADI seeks to circumvent easy categorization by comprising a diverse range of undertakings such as unannounced actions, curatorial projects, video screenings, paintings, collective art making, and mixed-use installations. All activities contain an undercurrent of cooperation and non-competition while at the same time functioning as emancipation from essentialism and identity-based artwork.

Oreka JamesOreka James (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a materials-based, multidisciplinary artist. Translating visions into sculpture, painting and sound, they explore material that has been obscured and transformed through space and time, land, love and ache, life and death. James’ practice bridges comparative ontology and metaphysics, speculative fiction and spirituality, traversing the intangible. They oscillate between play and devotion, often illuminating ancestral truths and personal tales. Fascinated by material and object alchemization, they continue their study into animism and object sentience.

James has completed a group residency at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and Bowling Green State University (Ohio). They have exhibited their work at Pangée (Montréal), NADA (New York), Cooper Cole (Toronto), Patel Brown Gallery (Toronto) and MOCA (Toronto) among others.

Sameer Farooq is a Toronto-based artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. Farooq has held exhibitions at institutions around the world including PRAx, Oregon (2026), the Jaou Photography Biennale, Tunis (2024). Toronto Biennial of Art (2024), Le 19, crac, Montbéliard, France (2024), Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (2023), Materia Abierta, Mexico City (2023), Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2023), Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax (2023), Galerie Nicolas Robert, Toronto (2023), Fonderie Darling, Montréal (2022); Susan Hobbs, Toronto (2022); Koffler Gallery, Toronto (2021); Patel Brown, Toronto (2021); Lilley Museum, Reno (2019); Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2017); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); The British Library, London (2015); Maquis Projects, Izmir (2015); Artellewa, Cairo (2014); and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2011).

Reviews dedicated to his work have been published by Art Forum, The Art Newspaper, La Presse, Canadian Art, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, Hyperallergic, Artnet, and C Magazine. He is an alumni of the Kohler Arts/Industry and Bemis Center residencies and has been longlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent art award.