This spotlight series celebrates the 28 artists featured in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts from April 14-August 11, 2024. The series was compiled by Susan R. Cohen, current trustee of the Massachusetts Committee of NMWA and former longstanding director of the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Cohen received her BA in Art History from Richmond and the American International University in London.

What is your vision of a new world? Twenty-eight artists from around the globe are answering this query, revealing through their work what each hopes, thinks, and worries over for the days ahead. 

Some work confronts the climate crisis as the world burns and floods and wildlife dwindles. Some presents indigenous voices speaking clear and strong about their place in the world - decrying what has been lost through ignorance and violence and what they have cherished and kept alive for future generations. 

The woman’s body is here as well, proudly challenging what history and media has circulated about her form. Science, geography, and genetics share space with reimagined reflections of materiality, femininity, and community.

April Banks is an artist and creative strategist whose work spans the fields of visual art, social engagement and exhibition design. Her recent work is sourced through historical archives and memories, and examines our contemporary idea of “the past” and makes note of how this conception has mapped our culture today, and what impact it will have on the future. Banks works to bring lesser-known stories to light, especially those of communities that have been erased from history, and intentionally forgotten.

In February 2021 she completed her first permanent public art sculpture “A Resurrection in Four Stanzas” in Santa Monica, CA, commemorating a former Black community erased by eminent domain.

Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, New Hampshire, Maryland, New York, Switzerland, Colombia, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Senegal and Ethiopia. Her work is in the collection of the Getty Museum and other private collections.

April Banks. Photo by Glen Wilson. Please click on the image to visit the artist’s website.

April Banks, Future Ancient, 2022; Fused glass, cut metal, LED light panel, 42 x 20 x 3 in.    Courtesy of the artist_light off

From the California Community Foundation website:

Artist’s Statement

“I am an LA based artist and creative strategist with deep ancestral roots in Virginia. My hybrid practice sits intentionally between image, space, and experience. Recent works from encaustic to steel sculpture time travel through historical archives and memories, questioning what we think we know of the past and how it informs our cultural systems and future identities.

My work is research and process oriented and I am a master of no medium, often learning new processes for a particular concept. My progression into public art is a natural evolution from architecture and my interest in how we experience space. For this reason, most of my projects include programming and activation that makes visible how we are permitted to exist in public. I believe that art is an amplifier, a truth teller and starts conversations that lead to change.

In 2021, I completed “A Resurrection in Four Stanzas” a public art sculpture in Santa Monica, CA, commemorating a former Black sea-side community erased by eminent domain. This work led to other place-based art commissions in Washington, DC, Sun Village, CA and San Luis Obispo, CA that examine our connection to nature, each other and the concepts of ownership.

I am the producer of Tea Afar, a nomadic storytelling experience, launched in 2016. Tea Afar was conceived as a salve—bringing us together across borders. We have hosted events in Los Angeles, Montreal, Sri Lanka and San Francisco that center first person stories and hospitality traditions from around the world.”