Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to contemporary art through the production of documentary films ...

Pepón Osorio was born in 1955 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1975, Osorio left Puerto Rico and moved to the South Bronx in New York City, ...

Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations ...

Mary Mattingly was born in 1978 in Rockville, Connecticut, and lives and works in New York. Combining a visual-art practice with environmental activism and education, Mattingly wrote a manifesto that ...

Art21’s education initiatives engage audiences in a dialogue about contemporary art and the artists featured in Art21 films. Programs are based on the organization’s belief that the art and ideas of ...

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from ...

Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba. Bruguera, a politically motivated performance artist, explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the ...

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures ...

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. Opie investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and ...

Elizabeth Murray was born in Chicago in 1940. She earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. A pioneer in painting, Murray’s distinctively ...

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction. After earning ...

Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960. Ligon’s paintings and sculptures examine cultural and social identity through found sources—literature, Afrocentric coloring books, photographs—to ...