Our Sensual Awakening Through Sex-Positive Art   – Upspoken
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Our Sensual Awakening Through Sex-Positive Art  

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Even if the idea of strolling through an art museum doesn’t turn you on, we could all use some more sexy art in our lives 😉.

Recently we were inspired by art boss Kimberly Drew, who’s been making art more inclusive and lit 🔥 through her blog Black Contemporary Art and her Instagram account Museum Mammy. We decided to look for more empowering art made by Black women that captures our human and sexual experiences in ways words simply can’t.

In an effort to get in touch with visual pleasure 👀 and recognize the beauty and power of Black bodies, we did some digging for you and found these bomb sex- and body-positive artists:

(Image Source: http://www.tyburngallery.com/artist/kudzanai-violet-hwami/#lg=1&slide=1)

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Artist Kudzanai-Violet Hwami was born in Zimbabwe and creates vivid oil paintings of Black bodies centering around the Southern African experience. Her paintings include nudes in vibrant colors and self-portraits that demonstrate her self-described “voyage of self-discovery.” See her art here.

(Image Source: http://www.mocp.org/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=maker&s=Williams%2C+Carla&record=0)

Carla Williams

Carla Williams is a San Francisco based photographer whose images explore physicality, beauty, sexuality, pleasure, humor, family, memory and general ideals of beauty. She believes that images of Black women by Black women reject society’s value of certain bodies and appearances over others. YASSSSSS CARLA! She recently re-released a collection of self-portraitsthat she shot in the late 1980s to reiterate the importance of showing Black women’s bodies from a Black woman’s perspective.

(Image Source: https://www.leebullitt.com/polaroids)

Lee Bullitt

Writer and photographer Lee Bullitt is based out of San Francisco and her work explores both gender and sexuality. The goal of her art is to push against both “Art” and “Gender” as constraining forces by creating a space for freedom of expression. She recently exhibited her photos in a show at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. In Lee’s words, the images in the exhibit “present an ethereal image of the black female body, the oneness and separation from the earth, the beauty, the vulnerability.”

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There is so much more uplifting art by Black women out there and this is only a small taste, so let us know in the comments if there are other artists motivating you on your journey of body- and sex-positivity.