Renée Cox

About

Renée Cox is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist, and curator renowned for her provocative works that deconstruct stereotypes of Black women and promote self-love and Black feminist politics. Born in Colgate, Jamaica, she relocated to New York with her family, where she developed an early interest in the visual arts. After working as a professional fashion photographer in Paris and New York, she earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1992 and began her fine art practice in the 1990s, often using her own nude body as a subject to challenge beauty standards, power structures, and historical representations. Her career includes creating the Negro Art Collective in 1995 to combat cultural misrepresentations and developing alter-egos like Raje, a superhero fighting racism.

Afrofuturistic and Black feminist photography reimagining art history with large-scale images of Black female bodies, drawing on Renaissance, Cubism, and Harlem Renaissance styles