Rashid Johnson is an African-American Conceptual artist often hailed as a standard bearer for post-black art. Working in sculpture and photography, the artist employs vernacular yet culturally loaded objects, including shea butter, funk albums, and space rocks, to create works like Cosmic Slop (2011). “When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested in how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism,” Johnson said. “You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.” Born in 1977 in Chicago, IL, he grew up in an Afrocentric family which influenced many of his ideas about identity. After earning a BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2000, he went on to ...