“I want my art to give a feeling of mysteriousness, that you’ve peeked into a moment that maybe you weren’t supposed to see,” says Afilandra Goncalves of Providence, who created the cover for this issue, “And you’ve gotten intimately close to… something.”
She describes her piece for Motif as a “kind of figure who is wearing hair pieces, clothing and jewelry from Sudan, Somalia and Congo. It’s supposed to be a shamanistic power figure.”
Goncalves draws her inspiration from African mythology and folklore, particularly Esu, the Yoruba trickster god, and Leuk, the original version of the Brer Rabbit in the oral tradition passed down by the descendants of Africans who were enslaved in the US South. Displacement is a major theme of her artwork, she adds.
The artist also cites her grandmother, a storyteller from Cabo Verde, as an important influence on her work. “Most of our language is passed on orally,” Goncalves explains. Born in Providence, Goncalves grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a primarily Black and Afro-Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. She became interested in art through her dad, an artist and printmaker. At five years old, she made a screen print with him. She calls it her first piece of art, and it adorns the home of one of her friends.
But it wasn’t until middle school that she decided to make a lifelong commitment to being an artist. “My art teacher, Mrs. Bennett, made me really care about it. She taught us all about art and culture, and has been a huge inspiration to me.” Goncalves attended art schools, including LaGuardia High School, before moving back to Rhode Island in 2016 to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), graduating in 2020. Goncalves is an apprentice at the Steel Yard, having tried her hand at metal sculpture at RISD, remarking, “I’m still learning about metalworking.”
Asked to describe her favorite artwork, Goncalves replied, “I feel like every new piece I make is my favorite piece.” She thought about it, and picked her self-portrait, Battle Clown, a colored pencil and fabric marker drawing on nylon paper that she did in 2024. “My art is about spreading awareness of the Black experience,” Goncalves concludes, “And applying African mythological ideas to our oral world history.”
Goncalves’ artwork, along with her animations and video experiments, can be viewed at her website https://afilandra.xyz/.
