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Modern Creators: Black Female Artists

Featured Artists

Aunj Braggs

Aunj is a painter, muralist, and mixed media artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work primarily focuses on her lived experiences as a Black woman and the representation of this marginalized group of people. She draws inspiration from the lives of her loved ones and fantasy/sci-fi themed books, media, and film. Aunj completed her Associate of Arts at Tulsa Community College. She graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Spring of 2018. 

Early in her career she exhibited at Oklahoma University, IAO Gallery, and her home University in Edmond. After her move back to Tulsa in 2019 she joined an all Black artists collective called Black Moon. Since her involvement with the collective, she has participated in group shows at TAC gallery, Living Arts, the Gilcrease Museum, and the Philbrook Museum. 

She continues to stay actively invested within the arts community of Oklahoma, and she is optimistic that the art scene here will advance to be more inclusive and diverse in the future. 

She explores her own personal narrative and how she can relate to other people—"you are who you are because of where you've been and I exaggerate my own perspective purely because I can”. Using a highly saturated color palette, her work fabricates surreal depictions with no anchor in space or time, developed by her visual influences from sci-fi/fantasy themes. Encouraging self-acceptance and building tolerance for unique appearances are consistent themes within her portfolio, “It is my hope that women of color, who have felt as isolated as I have, can see themselves within the visuals of my work”. Aunj often depicts hair as a defining characteristic of her subjects and Afrofuturistic can describe some of the pieces, which concentrates on placing Black people in a futuristic, surreal or fantasy aesthetic. This genre can be found in books, music, productions, and various art forms, all with the hopes of uplifting the Black community to see a future in which they are represented and thriving.