— LINA BUFFINGTON

ARTIST.

LEADER.

“ I work across figurative sculpture, masks, textiles, and symbolic visual language to explore what I call a “Lexicon of Freedom”

BIOGRAPHY

Lina (she/her) is an artist with a love for clay and textile arts; this creative spirit informs her social entrepreneurship, which spans non-profit and for-profit organizations.  Lina is an experienced and results-driven leader and entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience leading strategic planning and organizational development efforts for mission-centered nonprofits and institutions of higher learning. She also has 13+ years of college-level teaching and curriculum development experience. While her diverse experience spans multiple sectors, they are all aligned within an unwavering passion for social justice and equity. In addition to her MFA studies in Fine Arts at the National Glass Center in the UK, Lina currently serves as the CEO for Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health (NSRH). Prior to her tenure with NSRH she co-founded the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. Lina earned her BA in Philosophy from Spelman College and a PhD in Philosophy from Emory University.

Artist Statement

I work across figurative sculpture, masks, textiles, and symbolic visual language to explore what I call a “Lexicon of Freedom”: a counter-language through which beauty, embodiment, and alternative futures can be reimagined. I have begun to articulate the idea of a "lexicon of freedom"  to describe the ways that artists and thinkers from oppressed and marginalized communities create a kind of counter-language that forms the basis of liberatory thought. Black people throughout the diaspora have managed to reframe Blackness (think about the iconic black fist) to create an alternate set of meanings that we have used to combat white supremacy. Centering fat Black women’s bodies, my practice engages questions of lived experience, power, self-definition, and speculative possibility. My work is informed by my background in Philosophy, Womanist theory, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. It is also shaped by my lived experiences, ancestry and spiritual connection.

Research Framework

1

LEXICON OF FREEDOM

Womanist theory · Hermeneutics · Beauty as cultural construct

How can sculpture expand the visual language of the “body beautiful”?

2

EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE

Autobiography · Ancestry · Spiritual connection · Positionality

What does it mean to inhabit a fat, Black, female body — and to make art from within it?

3

AFROFUTURISM

Dr. Ruha Benjamin · Octavia Butler · Decolonizing the imagination

How can speculative imagination build a future that includes all bodies?

Artistic Conversation

My work is in dialogue with artists and writers who center the body, autobiography, and speculative futures.

Kerry James Marshall

Black figuration as counter-narrative

Wangechi Mutu

Afrofuturism · Hybrid female figures

Jenny Saville

Unruly bodies · Subverting the male gaze

Frida Kahlo

Autobiography as political statement

Octavia Butler

Godmother of Afrofuturism

Audre Lorde

The personal is political