✊🏿👏🏿🍉#ArtIsAWeapon
Spotlight on Abi Salami - "...a self-taught artist who creates surrealist works that explore her experiences as a Nigerian immigrant and Black woman in the United States. Through the use of a personal visual lexicon made up of symbols, she explores topics such as sexuality, mental health and race." https://abisalami.com/
Abi Salami Nigerian-American artist providing Fine art, African Diaspora Art in United States
🎨🎥✍️🏾 by artist @abi.m.salami (reposted) Too provocative for the Dallas Art Fair?
That’s what a gallerist told me when I tried to exhibit this painting in 2022.
I created this piece in response to the attacks on teaching critical race theory in American education.
A white woman representing the USA, hides a slice of watermelon behind her back. The juice drips down her fingers—sticky, inescapable. The watermelon, an already racially polarizing fruit, becomes a symbol of America’s brutal, racist past. She tries to conceal it, but the stains remain.
The juice—like the blood of Indigenous people, enslaved Africans, and civilians in U.S.-occupied nations—clings to her hands.
In the water, I reimagined myself as Mami Wata, the African water deity, biting into my own slice of watermelon with joy and mischief. Because she knows what happens to those who deny their past.
The lifebuoy labeled USA SOS is a warning: history denied becomes danger deferred.
I painted this with equal parts rage and joy—because sometimes the only way to confront erasure is to paint it loud, proud, and unforgettable.
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