2022 Fellows - Mural Arts Philadelphia Mural Arts Philadelphia

Mural Arts’ third cohort of the Philadelphia Fellowship for Black Artists is made up of 15 artists showing interest in socially engaged public art and working collaboratively. This year sponsored by TD Bank, the 2022 Fellows will be placed into teams based on skill sets and personal interests. Each team will then have the opportunity to respond to community mural requests.

Mural Arts is committed to engaging communities about social justice issues within their neighborhoods and addressing them through art to spur change. Fellows will receive an additional project-specific stipend for this work and have project management support from Mural Arts staff.

Meet the Artists

Faysal Adger

https://www.instagram.com/kingfaysal35/

Faysal is a 16-year-old Philadelphian native from Germantown. He was diagnosed with childhood brain cancer at a young age, and has been living life to the fullest ever since! He wants to be an inspiration to other people living with cancer. Faysal plays with color, perception, and texture in his stylized artwork. Faysal’s paintings have layers, nuance, and depth. His artwork exudes movement, exaggeration, and multicolor combinations. Faysal also delights in exploring Black culture in the subjects of his artwork. Faysal is currently a rising junior in high school, and he hopes to attend a culinary arts school in the future. Faysal aspires to own a food truck one day, and eventually own his very own brick and mortar restaurant that explores the food of the African diaspora.

Visit Profile

Branche Coverdale

https://www.branchecoverdale.net/

Branche Coverdale is artist based in Philadelphia. Originally a New Yorker, Branche works in an expressive and playful manner inspired from cartoons of his childhood with elements of the fantastical. Before moving to Philadelphia, he was a full time studio assistant for Takashi Murakami in NYC and studied at Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently working as a full time artist/illustrator.

Visit Profile

Zeinab Diomande

https://www.instagram.com/ztheratt/

Zeinab Diomande otherwise known as “Z The Rat” is a Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist. Diomande was born in 1999 in Virginia. Her family left the United States to relocate back to their home in the Ivory Coast where she grew up and spent most of her life. In 2018, she moved to Philadelphia where she is currently studying, majoring in Fine Arts Painting and Drawing at The University of The Arts. Diomande was a 2021 AXA Art Prize finalist, and she has been a part of exhibitions internationally and across the country, in Abidjan, London, New York and Los Angeles.

Visit Profile

Jah Guinyard

https://www.jaysquids.com/

Jah’s body of work centers black bodies adorned with humanity and elements that may not be of this world. Self-taught, Jah began painting as a means to express themselves and to connect with the world around them. Afrosurrealism is the provenance of their inspiration, a notion that seeks to cultivate alternative and expanded ways of knowing and being. Their work is an expression of Black people being able to imagine themselves in the future in a more liberated and free way.

Visit Profile

Chelsey Luster

https://www.chelseyluster.com/

Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, visual artist and art educator from Baltimore, Maryland. Luster received their BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture and attended a residency at Chautauqua School of Art. As a curator, Luster has organized multiple group exhibitions, was a Katheryn Pannepacker Curatorial Fellow at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, and is currently developing their curatorial practices as a Vox Populi member and Exhibition Manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.

Luster’s visual artwork focuses on intimacy, vulnerability, and privacy through depictions of domestic spaces. With their “American Bathroom” series, they use bathroom scenes to explore queer Black womanhood with regards to lack of privacy, invasion of the Black queer body, power structures, and isolation. Her work acknowledges the obstacles that burden queer Black women because of the intersectionality of their gender and sexuality and depicts these concepts through the renderings of voyeuristic bathroom scenes. In Luster’s current body of work, she is making work of people in their most vulnerable and personal physical and mental spaces whether it be in their studios, bedrooms, homes, or wherever they feel most at peace.

Visit Profile

Gloria Martin

https://www.instagram.com/gloriajeanstudio/?hl=en

Gloria Martin’s goal is to help heal, educate, inspire, and create work from a place of gratitude and self-forgiveness. Her artistic practice seeks to offer healing by highlighting themes of spirituality in nature, as we are all connected to it. Every aspect of nature has a spiritual purpose and function within our existence. Gloria’s work draws on those meanings for the mission of self-discovery and collective healing. She examines feelings of oppression and how knowledge of self, nature, and symbols can combat self-inflicted and/or external pain.

Visit Profile

Jazmyn Morse

Jaz is a queer Jamaican artist who began to take her digital art career seriously in the beginning of the pandemic. She loves to use vibrant colors and represent marginalized folks to create artwork inspired by escapism. She started drawing when she was 3 or 4 years old and learned from her older brother Richie, who unfortunately left this earth in 2019. She’s a fan of adult animations, a slut for smoothies, and loves to spoil her daughter, errr I mean cat, Chickpea.

Visit Profile

Monique Muse

http://www.mmusestudio.com/

Monique Muse is a Philadelphia-based sculpture artist and designer. Within her practice she seeks a holistic understanding of homeness through building her questioning and discoveries of it. A fascination in domestic construction methods, psychology of the home, and semantics underlies her work. Muse perceives her practice as infinite research, which is currently being documented through functional forms and conceptually integrated photographs.

Visit Profile

Yinka Orafidiya

http://www.yinkaorafidiya.com/crafting-community-video

Yinka Orafidiya is a socially-engaged ceramic artist based in Philadelphia and founder of “Crafting Community,” an initiative to foster social connection through shared artistic experiences. She completed an advanced pottery intensive with master potters in Ghana, West Africa and has also participated in residencies at Moravian Pottery and Tile Works (PA), the International Ceramics Studio (Kecskemet, Hungary), and Watershed (ME). Yinka has received a Multicultural Fellowship from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, and multiple awards from The Leeway Foundation, including the prestigous Transformation Award in 2019. She is currently building the foundation for the OYA Studio Museum, a host residency space that supports and collects the work of Black ceramic artists across the African diaspora.

Visit Profile

Kelley Prevard

http://www.kprevard.com/

Kelley Prevard is a self-taught artist and muralist whose work is centered on healing and storytelling. Through the development of her artistic skills, Prevard’s art has become more than just a creative outlet; it is her voice. She creates work that is influenced by social, historical, and cultural events. In her artwork, she explores and reveals the depths of her own identity, to revolutionize the way people view and experience Black women. As she moves forward, she hopes to keep translating experiences of trauma and loss into works of art that heal, tell stories, and create communal spaces.

Visit Profile

Kita Rich

https://www.flipsnack.com/nikitarichardson/nikita-richardson-philly-mural-arts-portfolio/full-view.html

Splitting their childhood between Oslo, Norway, and New York City, Kita developed a love for public space at a very young age. This led them to pursue a career in landscape architecture to be able to allow their designs to contribute to universal and accessible scapes within the cities they love. Kita’s art strives to uplift, amplify, and protect Black spaces and folx, all while holding gentrifiers accountable for the communities they have interested themselves in. Kita collaborates with local community members to develop collage renderings of neighborhoods and neighbors, to show the spaces of generational love and growth.

Visit Profile

Linda Gail Sanders

http://facebook.com/Linda-Gail-Sanders-Artist-111247568163641

Linda Gail Sanders paints or draws the abstract impressions of a figure, still life, or portrait. She seeks to interpret the energy that emanates from the subject. Linda tries to listen to what her subject demands of me as she infuses her work with the magic and mysteries of African folklore, along with the interplay of some of her artistic influences that have followed her almost from the very beginning, which are African art, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso, just to name a few. From there, her imagination in collaboration with her medium of choice, begins to bring that work to life. Sometimes it’s not that simple of a collaboration or process, as the subject itself may defy the medium or substrate and require a total change in direction from which it began, and begins to turn itself into something it wants to be and bring its own self to life in wonderful ways that she never imagined and did not expect, and she likes that.

Visit Profile

LaShawnna Simon

https://shawnwitz.com/

LaShawnna Simon (she/her) is a digital artist based in Philadelphia, PA. Also creating under the alias Shawnwitz, LaShawnna focuses on digital art and graphic design. She enjoys practicing traditional methods of painting and applying them using non-traditional media. Her work includes hints of whimsy, and as she strives to center subjects who are BIPOC in the name of representation and visibility.

Visit Profile

Dyymond Whipper-Young

https://www.dwhppart.com/commissions

Since the age of 11, Dyymond could be found covered in clay and paint. Her love for self-expression through painting and figurative sculpting led her to pursue a career that would allow her to explore the arts. Dyymond’s work has premiered in over 50 major events across the country. Some of her notable collaborations include working with PUMA, the NAACP, Jordan Nike Brand, the Los Angeles Urban League, and most recently partnering with Crayola and the Franklin Institute to break the record for the world’s largest drawing by a single artist, at 6,450 square feet. In 2016, Dyymond was named Temple University’s Homecoming Queen, where she was celebrated for her impact in her community. Today, Dyymond is an artist, curator, and educator. She has always been passionate about educating and exposing youth to creative expression, cultural heritage, and careers in the creative economy.

Visit Profile

Elle Yancy

https://www.instagram.com/elle.kiendy/

Elle K. Yancy is a Liberian born, American raised visual artist who enjoys exploring her artistic voice through the use of wet and dry mediums, photography, and most currently, tattoos. As a first generation Liberian who immigrated to the United States with her family as a child, Elle is heavily inspired by both her West Afrikan and Black/Afrikan-American cultures and the experiences that have come with navigating both identities. At large, Elle aims for her work to reflect the essential exploration of culture and the unifying forces found within. Working as an IT Specialist post undergrad for 5 years, Elle turned to pursuing her artistic practice full time after moving to Philadelphia from NYC in 2018 and now works as a tattoo apprentice in the Port Richmond area.

Visit Profile

Meet the Artists

Faysal Adger

Branche Coverdale

Zeinab Diomande

Jah Guinyard

Chelsey Luster

Gloria Martin

Jazmyn Morse

Monique Muse

Yinka Orafidiya

Kelley Prevard

Kita Rich

Linda Gail Sanders

LaShawnna Simon

Dyymond Whipper-Young

Elle Yancy

Sponsored by