Ifé Franklin

Ifé Franklin is an unbound artist, utilizing a number of mediums to express family and community histories, including photography, quilt-making, and textile work, videography, performance art, and the written word. Her education includes a number of prestigious institutions like California College of Arts and Crafts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and she has worked with talented and well-known artists like Stanley Pinkney and Marylin Arsem but she continues to find that her expression remains closely personal, intertwined with her faith practice, ancestry and experiences. Ifé’s name means love in Yoruba, and the love of her people can be seen in her book-turned-performance art piece, the Slave Narrative of Willie Mae and the associated slave cabins, which bring the past into the present, in her collages which incorporate the words, images, and depictions of West Africans and African-Americans, demonstrating the ongoing cultural connection between African peoples across the Diaspora. Ifé demonstrates that art is not always abstract; it is also based on lived realities.