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   I am a multimedia artist, researcher, and educator of Afrofuturism and Black Islam in the U.S. based in Baltimore, MD.

Read more about me here.

Recent:
Baltimore Beat’s review of Islam & Print’s What Happens When We Nurture exhibition.

UMBC Magazine’s alumni profile, “The Mundane Afrofuturism of multimedia artist Safiyah Cheatam”

  1. Assistant Manager of Teen Programs at the Walters Art Museum
  2. Co-founder of Islam & Print
  3. Trustee at the Awesome Foundation


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WORK


I wish I was unhappy


This artwork represents the concept of the Veil as referenced in W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk as a means of yearning for what is withheld on the other side.

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2021

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"Singing Praises to God" II 

The Arabic word   الحمدلله  means “Praise be to God,” the phrase used to describe a day in the life of Yarrow Mamout post-enslavement, signifying the importance of Arabic literacy to Black Muslims in the U.S.

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2021

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#AllRappersGoToHeaven


This artwork is the result of a counter-culture formed at the intersection of Islam and Rap music, with a nod to technology’s role in exacerbating the vulnerability of Black American people using augemented reality’s (AR) target recognition software.

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2014 - 2022

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Things Imagined


This body of work is a multimedia social practice installation that uses Mundane Afrofuturism and the halo motif to externalize and visually manifest the hopes of its Afro-diasporic participants.

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2019 - 2022

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Specks and Sums


Interested in narratives that challenge anthropocentrism, I carved rubber into ant stamps to create a massive mural that resembles the movement of galaxies, ant death spirals, tawaf, vortexes, hurricanes, moving atoms, planetary orbit, tree rings, and more thinking about recurring patterns in natural phenomena and the power in numbers.

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2019

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As Ritual, As Liminal 


This work is a social critique of the Saudi government’s involvement in behavioral dissonance, participating in various forms of corruption while also being the host country of Islam’s holiest site, the Ka’bah in Mecca. Aestheticizing the Ka’bah as a concept and as a monument, this piece melds two theorists’ concepts of physical and metaphorical space.

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2018

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