Mansa K. Mussa

Visual Artist • Photographer • Curator • Arts Consultant • iPadologist

AileyCamp Newark Performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Wednesday, August 10, 2022

I’ve had the privilege of being a member of the Alvin Ailey Dance Family as an instructor of traditional African...
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Ripple Effect Exhibit

UP NexT!  Visual Art Center of New Jersey Fall Art Center Faculty Exhibition Ripple Effect  68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ...
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The 8th Annual FREE JaZz Collage Workshop-Sunday, November 13, 2022, 2 to 5 pm

This Music We Call JaZz!  The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) and Ahavas Sholom/The Jewish Museum of New Jersey...
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Mansa K. Mussa

artist statement

          In the tradition of James Baldwin, I am an eyewitness, an eyewitness to things seen and unseen. I am a Newark artist and a citizen of the world, who has been living, working, dancing, teaching, and making art for over a half-century in the great metropolis. It is a life that has been shaped by the city’s fiery cauldron of art, politics, music, dance, fashion, power, and personalities.

          My favorite instrument of art is the camera, and the camera, negative, JPEG, and iPad are the vessels that capture the essence of my memory, that which I intend to be expressed or indicated. The photographer’s encapsulated memory makes us historians by default. Our work serves as a commentary on our observations of past, present, and future events in our lives, our communities, and by natural extension, the world.

            As a visual artist, my primary obligation is to document the unfolding of human events in the African Diaspora (The World) and to use art to serve and heal the Community. As an arts educator, my goal is to utilize art as a means of self-expression and as a tool to creatively solve problems.

Mansa K. Mussa

currently on display

student work

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