Based in London and the West Midlands with history steeped in early London graffiti art culture and graphic design. Create Not Destroy specialises in Videography, Photography, Mural Art and Design.

For Jay, art is a primal practice that connects us to Ancestral Strength, Sacred Healing and the Divine Cosmos. Growing up in East London, Jay was surrounded by a multicultural environment, and a close proximity to Epping Forest. From her time spent in Forests and taking trips to the beaches of her Ancestral home Antigua, Jay possesses a long-lasting love for divine nature. This theme is present throughout her artwork, where she makes romantic references to water and flora. An Obeahwoman and Spiritworker, Afro-Caribbean Cosmologies lie at the forefront of Jay Percy’s psyche and art. 

Themes include African Diaporic loss of Indigenous Spirituality in addition to reminders of the strength we can all find by reconnecting with the Animist practices respective to Ancestral homelands, prior to Colonisation. Jay works with acrylics and hand sews cowries and crystals directly onto canvas. She combines her love of highly saturated colours and royal golds with African Orisha worship, psychedelic print, and fundamental belief in the right to explore one’s own consciousness.

This design responds to the theme The Reality of Being Enslaved and in particular the story of Voyage. Whilst researching for my design, I came upon the poem ‘Slavery’ written by Hannah More, one of the most prominent female writers championing the abolitionist cause in eighteenth century Britain. I was particularly drawn to the lines of the poem which referred to light and darkness. 

I was reminded of the slave ships, or ‘Guineamen’ as they were known, and the horrific realities of the tortured human cargo crammed into their dark hulls. My design references the great maritime art of the eighteenth century and presents a subverted view of the golden age of sail. The glorious ships with their billowing white sails bathed in sunlight stand in stark contrast to what lies beneath. 

The base of the globe has been inspired by the 1791 Brookes slave ship diagram, one of the most recognisable images from the campaign to abolish the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans in Britain, and which provided the public with a clear visual representation of conditions on board slave ships for the first time. From a distance the base appears as a pattern but on closer inspection the figures of the enslaved are revealed. 

Extracts of the poem wrap around my globe design which delivers a visual metaphor for the abundant wealth and pleasure that the sweat of the dead had procured for others.

Donna Newman is the Artist behind Eden-designs Murals. A freelance artist based in the Midlands, she has been working as a professional muralist and painter for over 15 years. Donna responds to clients with creativity and flair producing original, playful designs in a wide variety of subjects. Working predominantly as a commissioned artist within school settings, she seeks to inspire young people by transforming their learning environments with her vibrant artwork. Her unique and innovative designs always seek to educate through their creative interpretation of the curriculum and she often works directly with School groups to create bespoke artwork through collaborative children’s art workshops. A self-proclaimed addict of public art trails, Donna has worked closely with Wild in Art on over 50 sculpture commissions.

http://www.eden-designs.co.uk

Part 2 of a series AFROPINK

Kassessa is a visual self-taught artist from Angola. From an early age, he was interested in art and developed a great passion for creating plays, toys and art crafts. He creates different concepts and translates them into different artistic expressions whether it’s through live events, stages and exhibitions or through printed digital, sculpture and painted mediums. He enjoys working with different materials and he expresses himself through his art, highlighting and bringing awareness to different societal issues and the people they affect.

The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans is an abstract concept for most of the world. Macro concepts such as “Africa” and “the West” are frequently loosely used in conversation. The British, having established a system for slaver compensation leading up to emancipation, kept painstakingly detailed records of the enslaved displaced to their colonial dependencies. For those of us in “post-colonial” Caribbean countries, the registers of the enslaved make the experience much more micro; individual details of the enslaved in our respective countries is quantifiable, even if only for a short space of time. 

This globe design superimposes a snapshot of the register of enslaved people from Golden Grove plantation in Cat Island, Bahamas from 1822 along with some of the earliest photographs of the colonial Bahamas by J.F.Coonley (1889) and William Henry Jackson (1905) from the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’s National Collection. 

It contains the names of Charlotte (an enslaved woman, who based upon archival records, played a large part in the uprising of enslaved people at Golden Grove in 1831, and who had made several attempts on the lives of her slavers) and her children William and Guy. 

The advent of photography on the heels of the end of apprenticeship in British colonies contributed to a purposely skewed, romanticised representation of people and place, but the registers of the enslaved get us closer to truths surrounding the conditions of their existence: one of the most glaring is that slavers truly regarded them as chattel.

Tamika is a documentarian and multimedia visual artist. A Bahamian native, Tamika’s work examines the complexities of living in a place shrouded in tourism’s ideal during the age of climate concerns. Emphasising the importance of Bahamian cultural identity for cultural preservation, Tamika documents aspects of Bahamian life not curated for tourist consumption to intervene in the historical archive. This work counters the widely held paradisiacal view of the Caribbean, the origins of which arose post-emancipation through a controlled, systematic visual framing and commodification of the tropics.

http://www.tamikagalanis.com

Gayani lives in Birmingham and is an artist, vegan chef and ethical floral designer originally from Sri Lanka who has lived in the UK for 27 years. Her work is based on nature, especially plants and flowers. She has been a Wild in Art artist since 2017. She has been glass painting for 26 years and is preparing to have an exhibition to celebrate 4,000 pieces of glass art that are from her collection. She uses art as therapy to help others (and herself) to overcome grief and improve mental health.

https://gayaniskitchenhq.wordpress.com/about/

Gabriel’s artwork combines the twin disciplines of printmaking and painting, primarily in oil on paper. Through his singular technique, Choto seeks new pathways into the painted image by taking cues from the surface quality produced by the printmaking process. His evolving, experimental practice involves layering painted areas of naturalism over the delicate compositional architecture of etching, resulting in paintings where physical presence and absence imply a metaphoric liminal state. Sensitive and intimate, these images include close family members, depicting quiet moments of contemplation or affectionate domestic scenes taken from old photographs, progressing into self portraits where through constructed situations the artist examines his own identity. Choto’s intimate paintings draw on themes of home, pride, identity and diaspora.

Dear Archives is a globe installation which gathers my mental montage on unpopular but renown historical figures. Learning history in schools through a mainstream lens has done a great disservice to history and how ethnic peoples see themselves in it. For example, growing up in school I vividly remember ‘Roots’, ‘Twelve Years A Slave’ or ‘The Colour Purple’ being audacious portrayals of the horrors of African slavery or racial injustice. 

Either we don’t go far back enough, or we don’t see history holistically. Since removing the colonial lens, I’ve come to learn that slavery and injustice was not unique to Africans or Black westerners; it was universal. Before the abolition of slavery in 1865, and before the ‘free world’, all peoples were enslaved. That being said, anything that is mainstream or taught in state school is questionable, and self-education is our own responsibility. 

Still We Rise is a theme that honours victors, not victims. By this, I mean African, Black westerners who were met with prejudice and used the opportunity to overcome, not remain victims, by being proactive and not reactive. 

James Forten innovated the original sail, owning a sail loft business worth millions, c.1800. He was friends with Paul Cuffee, a sea captain who built the first racially integrated school in Massachusetts. Septimius Severus, an African Roman Emperor came to Britain in the second century to strengthen Hadrian’s wall. Black Aristocratic Art is a blog I created to honour the side of art history which is often overlooked, or simply unknown. The title originally was the rule but is now the umbrella theme. 

It is important for black communities in the west to acknowledge African individuals who had a high net worth, and pioneered in their spheres of influence.

As a figurative painter, Afro-Caribbean and British citizen at birth, I assess ethnic minority identities in the western world by creating iconic narratives through my portraiture. Living in London has taught me to use ethnic isolation as a platform of distinction rather than a victim collective, and to understand other artists who have felt non-British because of their ethnicity. Painting is the bridge that transforms my thoughts into visual action against misrepresentation. Each painting has a voice of its own; they ask questions that must be answered. Art history is a critical subject for me, because not long ago I realised that ethnic minority artists find themselves underrepresented in historical portraiture. Before a painting of mine reaches its finished form, it requires investigation into my model, and their stance in society. The women I paint are artists, business owners and intellectuals sharing their stories by inserting themselves into the narrative of European art history. I want Europe’s diverse history to create a harmony between ethnic minorities and majorities in the gallery space, with the common denominator of healthy nationalism.

In recent years Pauline has often produced site-specific installations in metal and mixed medium work for the public realm. As a multidisciplinary artist Pauline also works in a range of other mediums within her engaged practice, including textiles, photography, and video. 

Regardless of the medium, her individual art practice is generally informed by the multiple layers of diverse cultures and heritage of the African diaspora. 

For this commission the theme was ‘Expanding Souls’ and Pauline states: 

"I thought about all the things Africa has given the world, but there were so many elements it was impossible to include everything on one globe. I decided to focus on music, the geometric patterns of African cloth that has influenced so much textile and fashion design, and the spiritual symbols of West Africa."

As a visual artist and curator, Pauline Bailey has led numerous art projects centred around engagement, equality, and diversity working with a range of excluded and vulnerable groups to find creative expression, particularly to address issues around heritage, identity, sense of place, health and wellbeing. She is one of the core members of the Black Arts Forum and Handsworth Creative based in Birmingham and also co-founder of the Daughters of Africa Foundation in the Gambia. Pauline has curated and exhibited work nationally and internationally and is continuing to develop opportunities for emerging artists internationally alongside her individual visual arts practice. Pauline’s practice has always centred around identity and belonging, and she also has a strong interest in other themes such as ‘dereliction’, the natural environment found/recycled materials and objects of the everyday. Pauline’s individual art practice is generally informed by the multiple layers of diverse cultures and heritage of the African diaspora.

www.paulinebailey-arts.co.uk

A Code For A Better Future draws heavily on what every community can do to create a better world for tomorrow. 

Using the Adinkra symbols that originated in Ghana, West Africa – which have been used for creating fabrics, logos and pottery for many centuries – this design creates a code for how we as humans need to behave to imagine a world that is equal for all. Identifying four core categories seen throughout the Adinkra symbols – education, co-operation, love and peace – the pattern that has been created on the sculpture resembles a code. Using symbols such as ‘Sankofa’ meaning ‘learn from the past,’ as well as ‘Bi Nka Bi’ which symbolises peace and harmony, this pattern asks the world to educate themselves on the past, and work together to find a better future. 

The colours and layout for this design are inspired by the lost wax pouring techniques of Benin. The symbols are arranged as though being poured from the top as well as rising up from underneath as though molten gold being poured through a mould. 

I have used a vinyl stencil technique to create the design, this involved spraying the whole globe gold and once dry, attaching the vinyl stencils to the sculpture. I then sprayed the whole sculpture black, and peeled the stencils off to reveal the gold symbols underneath. 

This method provides an extremely clean and precise finish, and creates a very smooth surface to which the varnish can be applied. The overall aesthetic of the sculpture is to be elegant and simple, with a very important message behind it.