Napoleon Maddox

The artist’s interdisciplinary practice brings together multiple forms of production to explore subconscious dimensions of intimate relationships, colonial legacies, and acts of liberation. Visual art and object-making have been central to their life since childhood, shaped by parents who used creativity as both a problem-solving tool and a means of sustaining family life, even while questioning its viability as a profession. This tension informs the work as both an act of resistance—asserting presence and voice as a person of African descent—and as a continuation of inherited, resourceful making strategies. Working across painting and mixed media, the artist feels a particularly strong connection to repurposed and recycled papers, layering new narratives over materials already marked by prior stories, while drawing deeply from childhood memories and a lifelong relationship to nature and Southern agricultural heritage.