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:
Islam & Prints What Happens When We Nurture exhibition named “Best of” in the Baltimore Beat’s end-of-year publication.

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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Specks and Sums (2019)






2019

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Ink on drywall
10’ x 7’

Interested in narratives that challenge anthropocentrism, the artist carves rubber into ant stamps to create massive images that resemble the movement of galaxies, ant death spirals, tawaf, vortexes, hurricanes, moving atoms, planetary orbit, tree rings, and more.



This site-specific mural invites others to stamp into the vast mass as one little speck of change; A role that ants play here on Earth and that we play in the larger universe. This work grew out of the intrigued posed by the overlapping visual systems of order and chaos within ecosystems and organized religions. The artist refers back to a verse in the Qur’an in which Prophet Sulaiman heard an ant warning its peers to go underground during war. A crisis he acknowledged and responded to by halting travel so the ants could be safe. Surah An-Naml 27:16-19 exemplifies the interconnectedness of living species in a humbling perspective that demands respect.


This work is intended to engage a sense of order and chaos referencing biological nature and our constructed systems of behavior to maintain control and order in human societies. As an interactive artwork, this piece grows increasingly chaotic as more participants engage in leaving their mark.