April Sunami
multi-media painter / installation artist / muralist / arts educator
"To some art may seem trivial or irrelevant to larger issues, but I believe that art is always in service of either maintaining or dismantling the status quo one heart and mind at a time."
Artist Bio
April Sunami is an award-winning multi-media painter, installation artist, muralist and arts educator. Her paintings are in the permanent collections of the National African American Museum and Cultural Center, the Southern Ohio Museum, the Columbus Convention Center, and have additionally been featured at the Columbus Museum of Art and the Akron Art Museum. Sunami’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the 2019 Cuba Biennial exhibition and the National Theatre in Accra, Ghana. Her work as a muralist is on permanent display at locations throughout Columbus and Cincinnati, and includes collaborations with various organizations and community groups including ArtWorks Cincinnati, Urban Blooms, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Designing Local, Maroon Arts Group and ArtsWay Mural Camp.
Her work was selected for the cover of the Winter 2022 magazine of the Akron Art Museum, and she was commissioned by the Columbus Art Museum to create a work inspired by the work of George Bellows, to be presented to the museum’s most honored patron of 2021. Her other honors and awards include the 2020 Future History Maker Award presented by Urban One Media, a 2020 Exemplary Distinction by the Ohio Senate, inclusion on 2019’s Top 10 local artists list by Columbus Underground, and the 2018 Greater Columbus Arts Council’s Professional Artist Award at the Ohio State Fair.
Apirl Sunami has been a recipient of the following GCAC grants and awards: Individual Artist grant (2018), Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition GCAC Professional Division award (2018), Cuba Cultural Exchange with Centro Provincial de Artes Plasticas y Diseno (2017), GCAC Community Arts Partnership Purchase award (2017), and a CAP-UP artist grant (2012).
Artist Links
Artist Gallery
Artist Q & A
How do you describe your art and your creative practice?
My work is part spiritual practice, social commentary, historical investigation, cultural exploration and personal catharsis in the form of mixed-media painting. Black women are front and center in my pieces to explore themes of femininity, power, spirituality, collective memory, time, mythologies and place. Through using the framework of women subjects I weave, adhere and attach meaning in each mixed-media painting. Each surface of my paintings are assembled and layered to suggest the complexity of the subject. Cowries, glass, maps, fabric and other ordinary objects become symbolic entities that assist in telling the story of the subject.
What is the best advice you have been given?
The best advice I received was from a celebrated artist who raised five children. She told me to always find time to make art.
What is something that people may not know about you?
I used to be in a rap group a very long time ago.
What do you love about your art and/or art making process?
Over the past three years I’ve reconnected to the joy and catharsis to be experienced through making art. Art has been a space to share my happiness, grief, anxiety, hope and all other feelings.
What question, related to art, do you wish people would ask and how would you answer?
I'm waiting for someone to be bold enough to ask "why does art matter anyway"? so that I can reply that it is always at the forefront of changing culture. To some art may seem trivial or irrelevant to larger issues, but I believe that art is always in service of either maintaining or dismantling the status quo one heart and mind at a time.
