The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) Celebrates Ten Years of the Emerging Artists Program and Announces the Awardees for 2026-2027

(MoAD) is pleased to announce Bay Area artists Jasmine Ross, Demetri Broxton, Dorian Reid, and Tahirah Rasheed as the 10th cohort of MoAD’s annual Emerging Artists Program (EAP) for 2026-2027. The awardees were selected from hundreds of applicants, who will present single artist shows at MoAD from spring 2026 through early 2027. Each of these exhibitions are centered in MoAD’s continued mission to place art of the African Diaspora at the center of the global cultural conversation.

The EAP reflects MoAD’s commitment to supporting, exhibiting, and amplifying the work of Black artists living and working in the Bay Area. As a leading contemporary art museum focused on the global African Diaspora, MoAD is proud to incubate innovative practices and foster long-term artistic growth.

‍

Generous Support Provided By Bernard Osher Foundation, Karen Jenkins-Johnson and Kevin Johnson, Robina Riccitiello and the Westridge Foundation

Next Exhibition Opens June 10th: Demetri Broxton, Ancestral Echoes — Crops of Empire

‍

Demetri Broxton is a mixed media artist whose work explores ancestral memory, cultural identity, and spiritual resistance within the African Diaspora. Of Louisiana Creole and Filipino heritage, he creates layered textile-based pieces combining archival photographs, screen-printed fabrics, and sacred materials like cowrie shells, beads, coral, and mirrors. His practice draws from African diasporic spirituality, New Orleans culture, and global Black histories.

Trained in painting at UC Berkeley (BFA) and Museum Studies at San Francisco State University (MA), Broxton merges studio art with research-driven storytelling. His current series, Ancestral Echoes, reimagines historical portraits into spiritual icons that honor the labor and lives of African Americans who cultivated crops like cotton, tobacco, sugar, and rice. Through hand-embellishment and ritual process, he transforms painful histories into sites of reverence and healing.

Broxton's work is held in the permanent collections of the de Young Museum, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian, Monterey Museum of Art, and Norton Museum of Art. He is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles.

In addition to his studio practice, he serves as Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco, where he supports emerging artists through exhibitions, education, and community engagement. Across both roles, Broxton is committed to honoring ancestral legacies while reimagining a more liberated future through art.

‍

About the Exhibition

‍

Ancestral Echoes? Crops of Empire explores the role of African Americans in cultivating the South's foundational cash crops: cotton, tobacco, sugar, and rice. Using archival photographs, textile-based portraiture, and ritual adornment, Demetri Broxton reimagines ancestral figures as icons of labor, resistance, and spiritual endurance. At the center of the exhibition is a mobile altar featuring living tobacco plants grown by the artist, inviting community participation and reflection. Through material storytelling and embodied memory, this work examines the violent histories behind these crops while honoring the cultural knowledge and resilience passed down through generations of Black life in the Americas.

‍

Tickets to visit MoAD and view the exhibitions:

‍

‍