Migration, Culture, and Flava in Ya Eye

Richmond Art Center’s 2026 Art of the African Diaspora exhibit.

By definition, a diaspora involves movement across space and time. Also, by definition, an event about the art of a diaspora involves people bringing culture across space and time. And in the Richmond Arts Center’s annual event – titled Art of the African Diaspora – the criteria for participating makes identity a prerequisite consideration of what will appear in the diasporic pathways.

But none of the above predefines the actual artwork, nor confines it to only one prescribed socialization of culture.

In the diaspora, time and place make definite impacts on what moves through them. Environments and conditions are inhibitors on impulses and intentions, just as much as they are inspirations. And to the extent that personality is cultivated in those influences, individuals will differ from each other because of where they are and have been.

This generates a broad perspective on the collection of art works created within the diaspora.

In the historical context of the diaspora, the Richmond Art Center’s event hosts a vitally important congregation. Fostered now for 40 years, it regularly uncovers the rising, resilient, ambitious community of artists in one of the most far-flung destinations of the African diaspora, the California Bay Area.**

That group of works – all sharing their ancestry –  can “evolve” over time, driven by the intent of each of the makers at their respective times.

For any individual artist, is the intent of the work to celebrate, philosophize, or critique? Is it to preserve, adapt, or innovate?

And what becomes the compelling attraction in the work for other persons within the diaspora? What kind of embrace does the culture offer through the artist’s effort: is it tradition, or soul, or consciousness?

Considering all the possible combinations of resources, motives, and attractions, the big message about the true nature of the diaspora is that it cultivates diversity as the way culture stays relevant.

That diversity is not just about the impressive range of different mediums a visitor encounters when attending the Art of the African Diaspora exhibit. While being all visual art, it broadly spans 2D and 3D works, well represented on the event’s online gallery of artists.

But here, below, is a look at how, within the Richmond on-land show, even just one medium and subject – painted faces, or identities – contains the breadth of variations that an artist can incorporate resulting in the “flavor” of the work, a wide variety of intents, motives, attractions, and more. Message: within commonality, differences refine meaning.

For example, clockwise from the top left, these seven works* show a progression beginning in a more naturalistic representation but gradually increasing in abstraction on the way to the bottom left. In that kind of difference, an artist’s piece has perhaps “captured” an identity, while another instead “constructed” one.

Meanwhile, the visually simpler images like the first two eliminate most of anything non-essential, leaving a face that is potentially more universally representative. In comparison, the more complex ones like the fifth and sixth suggest that the sense of “self” is always a work in progress, or even a performance.

Along the way, we don’t know if any of these are specifically “portraits”; but we don’t need to know: despite their specific differences, the faces all have in common an iconic presence.

Within that unifying presence, we might take each particular picture’s apparent mood as a reflection of our inner selves – a reflection as seen either by ourselves or by others. Or instead, the work might appear to be a snapshot of an outward personality, an example of how some people want to be seen. Further, in that duality of inner and outer selves, each face on display can be taken as either a celebration of who we already are, or an exploration of what we might like to be.

In short, these variations of faces not only have differing meanings. They also end up emphasizing artists’ wide-ranging approaches to forming meanings.

Recognizing the nature of creativity that way, it is easy to understand that there is plenty of room for tradition, adaptation and innovation in this exhibit of the community. Overall, we get to reflect on the famous phrase attributed to Henry Louis Gates: “If there are 44 million Black Americans, then there are 44 million ways to be Black.”

- Malcolm Ryder

Notes:

© 2026 Malcolm Ryder

“Flava in Ya Eye” title inspired by "Flava in Ya Ear", a song by American rapper Craig Mack released on July 2, 1994

Map illustrations newly generated by the author via AI from multiple knowledge bases.

* Artist credits/copyrights clockwise from the top left: Hellen; Desola; Zoe Boston; Karla Lawson; K. Dollar-Dickerson; Malik Seneforu; Shawn Sanders

** Scheduling and location details of the Richmond Art of the African Diaspora events through April are found and updated at Aotad.org