Changing It Up: An American Art Convening

Terence Hammonds

Artist

Terence Hammonds is a printmaker who lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio. His practice is informed and inspired by the struggles and determination of African Americans seeking equality during the Civil Rights movement. Hammonds fuses found imagery with soul, funk, rap, and punk influences, using decorative motifs and patterns to memorialize and reframe histories of racial identity in America. He received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  His artwork Black Abolitionist Wallpaper, commissioned by The Newark Museum of Art in 2023, is currently on view.

Photo by Wally German.

Erica Lord

Artist

Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Erica Lord is an interdisciplinary artist exploring concepts and issues within a contemporary Indigenous experience, including how culture and identity are affected by a rapidly changing world. Lord’s artwork is informed by her experience growing up between Alaska and Upper Michigan and her identity, drawn from Athabaskan, Iñupiat, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and English descent. An enrolled member of Nenana Native Village, she uses a variety of mediums to construct new representations of race to address multiple or mixed identity. Her artwork Multiple Myeloma Burden Strap, DNA/RNA Microarray Analysis, Variation II, 2023-24, was acquired by The Newark Museum of Art in 2024.

Bony Ramirez

Artist

Bony Ramirez is a Dominican-born artist who lives and works in New Jersey. Proudly self-taught, he paints surreal images of contemporary Caribbean life, reimagining colonial histories. Ramirez engages with Western European painting traditions as a way to think about the colonial influence still present in the Caribbean. He exhibits internationally and his artwork is in several institutions across the U.S. His solo exhibition Bony Ramirez: Cattleya is on view at The Newark Museum of Art April 18, 2024-March 9, 2025.

Photo by XEVOLVEZ.

Shahzia Sikander

Artist

Shahzia Sikander is an internationally renowned artist who is celebrated for subverting Central and South-Asian manuscript painting traditions, and for launching the form known today as neo-miniature. Born in Lahore, Pakistan and based in New York, Sikander’s practice, which also includes paintings, media work, and most recently, sculpture, has been pivotal in showcasing the art of the South Asian diaspora as a contemporary American tradition. Her first public sculpture, NOW, 2023 was acquired by The Newark Museum of Art in 2024.

Photo by Matin Maulawizada.

Seph Rodney

Discussant

Seph Rodney, PhD is a former senior critic and opinions editor for Hyperallergic and a regular contributor to The New York Times. He has written on art for CNN, NBC, Art in America, American Craft Magazine, and several other publications. In 2020 he won the Rabkin Arts Journalism prize and in 2022 won the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He is a co-curator of Get in the Game, the largest exhibition that SF MoMA has undertaken, opening October 19, 2024.

Photo by Francesca Magnani.