Arthur Jafa is an American artist and cinematographer known for his exploration of Black American experience through video, film, and installation. His work often combines found footage with powerful musical accompaniment to create emotionally charged visual essays. He has worked extensively in film, including as cinematographer for Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust.
Kerry James Marshall is an American painter born in Birmingham, Alabama, who creates large-scale paintings that center Black figures in art historical contexts. His work deliberately addresses the historical absence of Black subjects in Western art canon. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997 and had a major retrospective at the Met Breuer in 2016.
Hito Steyerl is a German filmmaker, visual artist, and writer whose work examines the intersection of media, technology, and global capitalism. She is known for her essay films and theoretical writing about images in the digital age. She teaches at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Cameron Rowland is an American artist whose work investigates the political economy of race and incarceration in the United States. His practice involves renting rather than selling artworks, critiquing systems of ownership and commerce. His installations often feature objects produced through prison labor or linked to systems of exploitation.
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer known for his innovative work with sound, photography, video, and collage. He gained recognition in the 1980s for his turntable performances and experiments with vinyl records. His work explores the relationships between sound, noise, photography, and time.
Camille Henrot is a French artist working across video, sculpture, drawing, and installation. Her work often explores themes of cosmology, natural history, and information overload in the digital age. She won the Silver Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale for Grosse Fatigue.
Teresa Margolles is a Mexican conceptual artist and photographer whose work addresses violence related to drug trafficking in Mexico. She trained as a forensic pathologist and often uses materials from morgues and crime scenes. Her unflinching approach brings visibility to victims of systemic violence.
Harun Farocki was a German filmmaker, writer, and installation artist known for his essay films examining images and technology. His work analyzed how images function in industrial, military, and commercial contexts. He produced over 100 films during his career before his death in 2014.
Doris Salcedo is a Colombian sculptor whose work references violence, loss, and memory in relation to political trauma. Her installations often use everyday objects transformed into poignant memorials. She is known for large-scale public interventions addressing historical injustices.
David Hammons is an American artist born in 1943, renowned for his conceptual and often ephemeral works addressing African American identity and institutional critique. His practice spans sculpture, installation, and performance, frequently using found materials. He is notoriously private and rarely gives interviews.
Kara Walker is an American contemporary artist known for her exploration of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through silhouetted figures. She gained prominence in the 1990s with her room-sized tableaux depicting antebellum South narratives. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997 at age 27.
Simone Leigh is an American artist who creates sculptures, installations, and videos exploring Black femininity and African art traditions. She was the first Black woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion in 2022. Her work synthesizes African architectural forms with the female body.
Andrea Fraser is an American performance artist associated with institutional critique, examining the structures and social dynamics of the art world. Her performances often involve adopting personas to expose hidden power relations. She is also an influential writer and educator on art and class.
Walid Raad is a Lebanese artist whose work examines the contemporary history of Lebanon, particularly the civil wars. He is known for creating The Atlas Group, a fictitious foundation that generates documents about Lebanese conflicts. His practice blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in historical narratives.
Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, and European descent. His work addresses contemporary Indigenous identity, resilience, and social justice. He creates participatory projects that engage communities in collaborative art-making with political dimensions.
Maria Eichhorn is a German conceptual artist whose work examines economic systems, labor, and institutional structures. Her projects often involve interventions in the normal operations of art institutions. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2022.
Deana Lawson is an American photographer known for her carefully constructed portraits that explore Black diasporic identity and intimacy. Her subjects are often photographed in domestic settings with symbolic objects and staged elements. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2020.
Tony Cokes is an American artist and filmmaker whose text-based videos critique media, capitalism, and racial politics. His work often features scrolling text set against colored backgrounds with musical accompaniment. He has been making video art since the 1980s and teaches at Brown University.
Bouchra Khalili is a Moroccan-French artist whose video installations and photographs address issues of migration, borders, and statelessness. Her work gives voice to people whose movements are restricted by geopolitical boundaries. She represented France at the Venice Biennale in 2024.
Anicka Yi is a Korean-American artist known for her multisensory installations incorporating scent, biology, and technology. She collaborates with scientists to create works that challenge traditional art materials and explore microbiology. She won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2016.
LaToya Ruby Frazier is an American artist using photography, video, and performance to address industrialization, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Her work often focuses on working-class communities and their struggles. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015.
Ryan Trecartin is an American artist known for his frenetic, hyperactive videos featuring rapid editing, garish aesthetics, and improvised performances. His work explores digital culture, identity fluidity, and contemporary communication. He frequently collaborates with artist Lizzie Fitch.
Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-American artist known for her large-scale abstract paintings layering architectural drawings, maps, and gestural marks. Her work addresses globalization, migration, and geopolitical conflict. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.
Nicole Eisenman is an American artist known for paintings and sculptures that blend figuration with social commentary and dark humor. Her work often depicts contemporary scenes with references to art history. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015.
Delcy Morelos is a Colombian artist whose large-scale installations use earth, soil, and natural materials to explore Indigenous cosmologies and connection to land. Her work draws on Andean and Amazonian belief systems. She represented Colombia at the Venice Biennale in 2024.
John Akomfrah is a British artist and filmmaker of Ghanaian descent, known for his multichannel video installations exploring memory, postcolonialism, and the African diaspora. He co-founded the Black Audio Film Collective in 1982. His work combines archival footage with newly shot material.
Park McArthur is an American artist and writer whose work examines disability, access, and infrastructure. As a wheelchair user, their practice makes visible the barriers and improvisations that structure disabled experiences. Their work helped catalyze disability-focused contemporary art discourse.
Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean poet, filmmaker, and visual artist whose work draws on pre-Columbian Andean traditions. She is known for her "quipus," installations of knotted and dyed fibers referencing ancient recording systems. Her practice addresses Indigenous knowledge, feminism, and ecological crisis.
Mendi and Keith Obadike are American artists and musicians who collaborate on projects exploring race, sound, and digital culture. Their work often uses humor and irony to critique commodification and racism. They were pioneers in addressing race within net art.
Asad Raza is an American artist known for his site-specific installations that involve natural processes and systems. His work often incorporates living elements and scientific processes. He creates immersive environments that question the boundaries between art and life.
Aliza Shvarts is an American performance artist whose undergraduate thesis project sparked intense controversy around abortion and bodily autonomy. Her work explores the intersection of bodies, ideology, and uncertainty. She continues to work in performance and has become an influential voice in feminist art discourse.
Matthew Barney is an American artist known for his elaborate multimedia projects combining sculpture, photography, drawing, and film. He gained fame for the five-film Cremaster cycle created between 1994 and 2002. His work features elaborate mythologies and biological metaphors.
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban performance artist and activist whose work addresses political oppression, censorship, and immigration. She is known for participatory performances that create situations for social engagement. She founded Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies program in Latin America.
Britta Marakatt-Labba is a Swedish Sámi artist known for her embroidered textile works depicting Sámi history and culture. Her practice revitalizes traditional Sámi textile techniques to create contemporary narrative artworks. She has been working as an artist since the 1970s.
Carolyn Lazard is an American artist whose work addresses chronic illness, disability, and access through video, installation, and performance. Their practice explores how disability is represented and experienced. They are a key figure in the disability justice art movement.
Frieda Toranzo Jaeger is a Mexican artist whose paintings incorporate embroidery and explore themes of technology, Indigenous identity, and feminism. Her work often features cars and addresses relationships between labor, desire, and environmental crisis. She combines Western painting traditions with Mexican textile techniques.
Emily Jacir is a Palestinian-American artist whose work addresses displacement, exile, and Palestinian identity through photography, video, and installation. She uses her American passport to complete tasks for Palestinians with restricted movement. She won the Golden Lion at the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Sondra Perry is an American artist working with video, installation, and digital media to examine Blackness, technology, and representation. Her work explores how digital technologies fail to accommodate Black bodies. She uses glitch aesthetics and digital manipulation to critique systems of visual representation.
Meriem Bennani is a Moroccan artist known for her videos that blend animation, documentary, and fiction. Orian Barki is an Israeli animator and artist. Together they created the 2 Lizards series during the COVID-19 lockdown, using digital avatars to document New York life.
Josh Kline is an American artist whose installations examine labor, automation, and economic inequality in contemporary America. He often uses 3D printing and commercial products to create works about the precarity of service work. His practice combines sculpture with social commentary.
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor known for his monumental wall sculptures made from thousands of metal bottle caps. His work transforms discarded materials into shimmering tapestries that reference African textile traditions. He has been making art for over 50 years and has exhibited globally.
Daniel Joseph Martinez is an American conceptual artist whose provocative work addresses race, politics, and American identity. His practice spans installation, sculpture, and performance. He is known for confrontational works that challenge viewers' assumptions about nationalism and social structures.
Jana Euler is a German painter known for her bold, unsettling paintings that employ humor and provocation. Her work often features distorted bodies and combines figuration with abstraction. She uses painting to explore gender, power, and the grotesque.
Steve McQueen is a British artist and filmmaker who works across film and video installation to address history, race, and power. He won the Turner Prize in 1999 and an Academy Award for Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave in 2014. His art practice often explores surveillance and the gaze.
Thornton Dial was an American artist from Alabama known for his assemblage sculptures addressing African American history and social justice. Originally a self-taught artist who worked in a factory, he gained recognition later in life. His work incorporated found materials into powerful narrative compositions until his death in 2016.
The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) who impersonate corporate and government spokespersons to critique capitalism. They create elaborate hoaxes that expose corporate malfeasance. Their performances blur the lines between art, activism, and media intervention.
Paul Pfeiffer is a Filipino-American artist known for video and sculptural works that manipulate sports and entertainment footage. His practice explores celebrity, spectacle, and digital image manipulation. He digitally removes players from sports footage, creating uncanny meditations on desire and devotion.
Jill Magid is an American artist whose work explores emotional and legal structures of power through performance, video, and installation. Her projects often involve long-term investigations into institutional authority. She is known for turning bureaucratic restrictions into conceptual art opportunities.
Ragnar Kjartansson is an Icelandic performance artist known for durational performances and video installations combining music, repetition, and emotional intensity. His work often involves collaboration and explores themes of beauty, melancholy, and endurance. He frequently incorporates personal relationships into his art.
Michael Rakowitz is an American artist whose work addresses war, displacement, and cultural destruction. His ongoing project recreates objects looted from the National Museum of Iraq using Middle Eastern food packaging. His practice combines sculpture, social practice, and historical research.
Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian conceptual artist known for his provocative and often controversial sculptures. His work uses dark humor and shock to critique power, religion, and art world systems. He staged a fake retirement in 2011 before returning to making art.
Cory Arcangel is an American artist working with digital media, video games, and internet culture. He modifies video game cartridges, software, and digital platforms to create works about technology and nostalgia. He is a key figure in post-internet art and net art movements.