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Karen Seneferu
Founder
Karen Seneferu is one of the most thought-provoking visual artists of our time. Born and raised in Oakland, California, her childhood was fed by revolutionary politics and the Black Panther Party's complimentary breakfast program. She has dedicated her life to working as an educator and artivist. Self-taught in her artistic craft, Seneferu is obsessed with gathering information, imagery, and ideas. Senefuru is grounded in the philosophy that space dictates meaning. What enters that space is dictated by the meaning of the space or can change the importance of the space.
As founder, Artistic Director, and curator of The Black Woman Is God, Seneferu seeks to transform the meaning of space for Black women and intergenerational artists. She is interested in these artists speaking and dialoguing with each other as a vehicle of change. She does this by having well-known, emerging, and veteran artists in the same space to show the dynamics of their contributions to the historical legacy of Black women artists to the globe.
In 2021, the virtual exhibition of The Black Woman is God asserted that celebrating Black women is essential to building a more just society and a sustainable future. The project will explore the intersectionality of race, age, and gender and dismantle Black women's stereotypes. TBWG will reach out across global communities to reclaim physical space historically denied to Black women artists. In doing so, generations will reclaim the legacy of Black women artists.
TBWIG exhibitions reconfigure communal trauma, employing African Diaspora traditions and practices, connecting dance forms rooted in cultural, historical, and cosmological recognition in public spaces with recognizable African motifs embedded in the form. The program will provide a bridge to the expressions' meaning, exploring the artists' deep cultural connections to their work. The mission is to assert that we are moving beyond embattled ideologies and communities toward African spiritual growth.
The community connections will address the various artistic mediums of visual and performing arts, workshops, and artist talks, all designed to re-remember that Black people are the first human beings to contribute to global society beyond African culture.
The 2020 Black Woman is God exhibition will explore the intersectionality of race, age, and gender and examine Black women's contributions as artists, healers, and social change-makers. The exhibition will feature over 80 new works by Black women employing painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film/video, mixed, new media, and performance, showing that when Black women create, they are God.
