April Bey The Bahamas , b. 1987

April Bey (b. 1987) grew up in The Bahamas, on New Providence, and now resides and works in Los Angeles as a visual artist and art educator. She is currently a tenured professor at Glendale Community College. Her interdisciplinary artwork is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture. It explores themes such as feminism, generational theory, social media, post-colonialism, futurism, and surreal imaginaries. Her work also engages with Blerd culture — a contraction of “Black” and “nerd” — which refers to popular, geek, and speculative culture as seen through Black perspectives.

 

Bey’s two-dimensional mixed-media works and installations are part of her ongoing Atlantica series. The artist often describes Atlantica as her home planet, a fictional world rooted in a childhood story told by her father: in response to experiences of racism and colorism, he told her that they were extraterrestrials sent to Earth to observe and report. From this foundational narrative, she developed a highly personal visual mythology. Within this world, Bey incorporates faux fur, glitter, vinyl, and woven textiles — materials that resonate with adornment, excess, camp, queerness, and speculative world-building — to craft icons based on real-life figures from her community.

 

Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Nevada Museum of Art, Reno NV; The Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; The California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA, among others. She has been included in group exhibitions at The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; The National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica; The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, TX; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas, among others. Her work is in the public collections of California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT; Escalette Collection, Chapman University, Orange, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Nassau, The Bahamas; Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA, among others.