Studio reference · nine Diaspora visual languages
Learn to see it. Then learn to say it.
Nine visual languages built by Black and Diaspora artists — the history, the artists, the marks. Walk the cycle, then step into the Prompt Lab and pull prompts that carry that era's color, rhythm, and cultural layering.
How the archive works
Study a movement
Where it happened, who shaped it, and what political weather it was made in.
Train your eye
The cues that give a style away — mark-making, palette, composition, mood.
Pull the prompt
Stack your layers, roll the dials, and keep rerolling for endless variations.
The nine movements
See the gallery →
Civil Rights Figuration & Abstract Witness
New York City · 1963–1965
AfriCOBRA & the Cool-Ade Aesthetic
Chicago, South Side · founded 1968
Washington Color School Abstraction
Washington, D.C. · mid-1960s onward
Diaspora Map Painting
London & New York, via Guyana · 1960s
Afro-Brazilian Geometric Symbolism
Bahia & Brasília, Brazil · 1960s
Pop-Cubist Social Portraiture
Harlem & New York City · 1963–1967
Harlem Photomontage Narrative
Harlem, New York City · 1964 onward
Négritude Modernism / École de Dakar
Dakar, Senegal · 1960–1974
Caribbean Intuitive Modernism
Jamaica, Haiti & the wider Caribbean · 1950s–1970s