Whilst Mehretu’s art is inspired by events taking place in Africa and the Middle East, she resists interpretations of her work that fail to see past her ethnicity. According to the artist, her work is not all about “blackness” or “otherness.” She believes that there is a failure to “simply accept and understand that a woman of African descent is making large, abstract paintings” and that this is a restrictive view of what artists of color can achieve.
Cindy Sherman epitomizes the 1980s technique of “image-scavengering,” and “appropriation” by artists seeking to question the so-called truth potential of mass imagery and its seductive hold on our individual and collective psyches.
Elizabeth Murray’s experiments with the shaped canvas were unparalleled, taking what other artists had begun to play with to its apotheosis. Her use of rich but oftentimes discordant color, the massive size and complexity of the canvas(es), and the interweaving of the cartoonish, the disturbing, and the playful influenced her peers and artists in the proceeding decades.
Walker always insisted that her job was to jolt viewers out of their comfort zone, and even make them angry, once remarking “I make art for anyone who’s forgot what it feels like to put up a fight.” In 2007, TIME magazine featured Walker on its list of the 100 most influential Americans. In 2008 when the artist was still in her thirties, The Whitney held a retrospective of Walker’s work. Though Walker herself is still in mid-career, her illustrious example has emboldened a generation of slightly younger artists to investigate the persistence and complexity of racial stereotyping.
Octavia Butler was a pioneering writer of science fiction. As one of the first African American and female science fiction writers, Butler wrote novels that concerned themes of injustice towards African Americans, global warming, women’s rights, and political disparity. Her books are now taught in schools and universities across the U.S.
An entrepreneur, advocate, and member of the Blackfoot Nation, Elouise Pepion Cobell (“Yellow Bird Woman”), fought tirelessly for government accountability and for Native Americans to have control over their own financial future. During her life, she won countless awards, founded the first Native American owned bank, and successfully won a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Government.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. Her best-known works include Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) – which was adapted into a 2013 film – short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), Americanah (2013), We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017).
She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008.
Mary L. Bonauto is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has fought against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. US Representative Barney Frank called her “our Thurgood Marshall.” In 1990, she began working with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, later re-named GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). Bonauto worked with the Maine legislature to pass a same-sex marriage law and helped to defend it at the ballot during the 2009 election campaign, narrowly losing. These efforts yielded results wen, in the 2012 election, voters approved the measure, making Maine the first state to allow same-sex marriage via ballot vote. Bonauto is best known for being lead counsel in the case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which, in 2004, made Massachusetts the first state where same-sex couples could marry. She also led the first strategic challenges to section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
On April 28, 2015 Bonauto was one of three attorneys who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, arguingthat state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The highly publicized case established that state bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional; it is considered one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in modern history.