Makeba's Biography

My art practice centers marginalized voices within the Black community to provide a fuller, more nuanced view of the whole community and empower individuals by giving them autonomy over how their stories are told thus providing alternative potentialities for Black Liberation.

I create digital collage portraits that incorporate Ankara prints and use social media as an archiving medium/tool. My creative practice focuses on the transformative healing power within community building.

My artwork incorporates themes of self-determination, creative problem-solving, cooperative economics,

and restorative justice as seen in social movements such as the Black Arts Movement of the 60s/70s and the more recent BLM movement. I create bonds with the larger Black community by being in conversation with the members of my web-based Black Artist collective and by curating community-led art exhibitions and programming at my home gallery. It is through the collective excavation and activation of the ancestral knowledge rooted in our bodies that we can heal ourselves from intergenerational trauma and live in our purpose.