Diversity in Art

Diversity in Art

What comes to mind when you hear the word "diversity"? What imagery? What words? 

Do you think of different kinds of cheeses for your burger?

Are you reminded of different genres of movies?

What about different tones of skin color?

Or hair color?

Or races?

Or ethnicities?

Diversity = the state of being diverse; variety; a range of different things

Diversity celebrates the various differences and unique orientations in a multitude of things, such as race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, politics, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, age, physical abilities, and other ideologies. 

Diversity in ART is a very special way to represent all the individual and unique differences every person on this planet possesses because it not only speaks for the artist but TO THE VIEWER. Art is there as a pathway that connects the artist's brain to the real world and the real world to the artist's brain. Celebrating the diverse types of art AND the diverse artists helps all of us to see the world in a different way, perhaps allowing us to empathize with those different than us in their struggles, whether personal, local, global, or systemic. 

Take the image above... a painting titled "Diversity" by artist Lorella Mastropasqua. She is a Pop Artist, born in 1971 in Milan, Italy, who has always had a passion for painting, leading her all over Europe designing marketing images for a variety of artistic and fashion collaborations.  Mastropasqua has a keen sense of the world around her in the way she paints, celebrating the differences between cultures through her use of vibrant colors and bold lines and textures. Represented in the painting above are four women, very different in their appearances and, most likely, their own unique lives.

For more on the life and work of Lorella Mastropasqua, click below... 

Amy Sherald

Amy Sherald is an African-American artist, born in Columbus, Georgia in 1973, who now resides in Baltimore, Maryland and has shown her art in dozens of galleries, both individually and in a group setting. Her work is centered around the intricacies and contrast of African-American life and individuality through her bold and vibrant colors in the clothes of her subjects. The skin tones she paints with are very limited; however, juxtaposed to the brilliance of the clothing colors, it created a very real tension and composition that is lovely to look at.

<-- Innocent You, Innocent Me

54x43"

Oil on Canvas

2016

Rashid Johnson

Rashid Johnson, born in Chicago, Illinois in 1977, is an extremely influential contemporary American artist whose work conveys "a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history". Johnson has broadened his art-making to include sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation ­– illustrating a detailed and complexity in his art that exhibits diverse materials busting with symbolism and personal history.  (Source: Hauser Wirth website)

In addition to the materials listed above, Johnson has broken in to the extraordinary use of subject matter that is derived from his own personal history and the African-American experience, such as shea butter, CB radios, gilded rocks, literature, and record covers. Often, his work tends to cover a bit of the mystic and occult in a way that is not meant to divert, but rather to showcase the necessity of transformation within oneself and to show how each of those objects is important is relating to the viewer.

Tatyana Fazlalizdeh

Tatyana Fazlalizdeh is a Black/Iranian artist born in Oklahoma City in 1985 who centers her current Brooklyn, NY work around the concept of gender harassment, specifically against women. Her street art style that brings attention to marginalized groups of people, oppressed and distressed, is a sight to see. The street art series titled "Stop Telling Women To Smile" brings to light sexual harassment in public spaces and how women, who for centuries have been told things like "you'd be prettier if you just smiled", are fed up with it. For the past five years in April she has held an International Wheat Pasting Night for individuals to use wheat paste and "plaster" their town with flyers supporting her work and her message that anyone around the world can participate in.

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist, born in March of 1929, who is described through her artwork as the "princess of polka dots" because of her continued repetitive nature of polka dots resembling her vivid and hallucinogenic dreams about dots. Kusama is a multi-media artist who dives in to painting, sculpture, illustration, and performance art, but they all have one thing in common: dots! She describes her growing inspiration from a dream she had when she was a little girl in which a field of flowers started talking to her, becoming "self-obliterating" in to an endless field of dots and spots. 

‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’.  - Yayoi Kusama


Yayoi Kusama Studio Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life 2011 © Yayoi Kusama/Yayoi Kusama Studio, Inc 

TURN IT IN

Consider the inspiration from all these artists, plus any others you have come across not on this site... what do they all have in common? They are inspired by what's going on around them or within them... they dive into their psyche and their minds, in to their dreams, their aspirations, their wishes for the world, and they create art that reflects and inspires.

Your piece of art will represent someone different than you! You will be able to understand their position or beliefs that are different than yours. This project will help you to empathize with people who are different than you.

How will you do their lives justice?