Nona Faustine

This work is based on Faustine's research on the history of slavery in the five boroughs of New York City, including slave burial grounds, slave markets, slave owning farms, and the landing spots of slave ships. Standing in white shoes, she reminds viewers how often African-Americans must adopt white culture. Posing on a wooden box at locations around New York where slaves were once sold, "baring her flesh to history, she conveys the most fundamental horror of the slave trade, the way it reduced people to mere bodies, machines of muscle." Her 2016 exhibition at Smack Mellon was reviewed extensively. The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz wrote, "Faustine's photos serve to mark the places that belong to a history too often hidden from view, whether by design, or neglect, or the ever-frenetic pace of change inherent to life in New York."

Faustine received a BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She earned an MFA at the International Center for Photography-Bard College program in 2013. As an MFA student, Faustine began to move away from the traditional documentary model. "It just didn't work for me anymore. I wanted more room to play with communication. Conceptual works appealed to me."

Faustine began to work on "White Shoes" as a graduate student. Influenced by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, Faustine began the series as her thesis project in 2012 and continued to add to it over the subsequent three years.

She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY and The International Center of Photography at Bard College MFA program. Her work focuses on history, identity, representation, and what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. Her work is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, and the Carnegie Museum.