TED Talk – Shani Jamila

[email protected]

Artist and cultural worker Shani Jamila shares how her family lineage and world travels shape her journey toward justice. Inspiring lessons about the social significance of art and how it can teach us to see emerge from the stories she tells.

Shani Jamila is a conceptual artist & cultural producer who explores identity formation in African American and African diasporic communities. She utilizes her family’s genealogical records as a primary source and her travels to over fifty countries deeply inform her practice. Her paintings, soundscapes, and collages have been presented at the Manifesta European Contemporary Art Biennial, Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, Ace Hotel, Corridor Gallery and Harvard’s Cooper Gallery.

She is the founder and host of Lineage— an archive of intimate, in-depth interviews with contemporary socially engaged Black artists. Her meditative film We Hold These Truths, produced with the Park Avenue Armory, features inspiring reflections on ancestry from a multidisciplinary cast of history shaping artists. Named “One of the 35 Most Remarkable Women in the World” by ESSENCE magazine, Shani's portrait and quote are featured in “A Choice to Change the World,” a permanent installation of artists & advocates at her alma mater Spelman College. Her work has been supported by the Aspen Institute, TED, MASS MoCA, Brooklyn Arts Council, National Arts Club, and the J. William Fulbright Foundation.