Working across diverse media—including cut paper, drawing, gaming and oil paint on blackboards—artist Nyame Brown (he/him) draws on African American folklore to construct imaginative worlds where fantasy and reality seamlessly intertwine. He situates his practice within the framework of Afrofuturism, a cultural and artistic movement that merges science fiction, speculative storytelling, history, and fantasy to reimagine the Black experience. Afrofuturism connects African diasporic communities to ancestral legacies disrupted by the Atlantic slave trade, while also envisioning liberated futures.

John Henry, the folk hero known for outlasting a steam drill in a legendary labor battle, recurs in Brown’s work as a symbol of resistance. But in Drippin in the Bay: John Henry with His Head in the Clouds (2022), Brown shifts the focus. Seated on the Bay Bridge, a purple-skinned giant appears contemplative and at ease—less a laborer, more a figure of rest. Rather than glorifying toil, Brown reimagines Henry as a symbol of self-care and quiet defiance in a culture that demands constant hustle.

Brown is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award and the Richard Dreihaus Foundation Individual Artist Award, and completed a public commission for the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation. Brown has held residencies at the Theaster Gates’ Black Artist Retreat, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Bemis Center, and the Joan Mitchell Center. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Hearst Museum at St. Mary’s College, and West Virginia University Art Museum, and has exhibited widely. He participated in a symposium with Carrie Mae Weems at The Armory in New York, and earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from Yale. He lives and teaches in Oakland.

Nyame Brown invites SEE(d) Creative Network to share good food and wine, dialogue, deep looking, and community in his Oakland-based studio on Saturday, August 23, 4 PM - 6 PM. Join us!