Helina Metaferia

Helina Metaferia draws from her interdisciplinary practice to emphasize narratives centered on social engagement. Her series of headdress portraits use images hand cut and assembled into collage. Her process, rooted in the archives and history of activism in the United States, is simultaneously focused on contemporary BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) women, all of whom are directly involved with the artist through performance-as-protest workshops. Her work reminds us that progress, or the labor in pushing for progress, is never linear. It is power, and it is vulnerability. It is failure, and it is success. In 2023, Metaferia conducted a performance-as-protest workshop at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in collaboration with the Museum of the African Diaspora.

Metaferia received her MFA from SMFA at Tufts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent solo exhibitions include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Praise Shadows Gallery, Boston, MA; and Bolinas Museum. She is an Assistant Professor at Brown.