The Creative Class: Rashid Johnson

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Name: Rashid Johnson

Occupation: Artist

Location: New York

How We Know Him: A consummate artist, Johnson’s work has been gracing gallery halls for the past two decades.

Why We Chose Him: His art celebrates all things us.

What’s Next: He was selected to participate in the Barnes’ Foundation’s 30 Americans exhibit, which highlights groundbreaking contemporary African American artists.

IG: @rashidjohnson

There’s a reason why Rashid Johnson’s work is considered the prototype of post-Black art.

Working across various mediums, Johnson uses a mixture of sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation to explore Blackness, with his works highlighting everything from Funkadelic styles to shea butter. “When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested in how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism,” Johnson stated per ArtNet. “You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.” His work is an exploration of cultural identity, inspired by the Chicago-born, NYC-dwelling creator’s upbringing in an Afrocentric household.

Through his creations Johnson stimulates the visual eye through is the implementation of various materials and textures, he also provokes a deep inward conversation on what it means to be Black and how the symbols that speak to us play a part in everyday society.“In my subsequent trips to Africa I’ve come away with the sense of how African I am not, more than how African I am,” he has said. “I was more African before going to Africa than I was ever after visiting there. It’s a complicated connection and those materials expand upon how complicated that connection can be.”