Intersections of the sacred and the secular
This week we welcome Bianca Vivion, an African American artist whose oil paintings explore stillness, devotion and interior life. Beginning her career as an essayist and cultural commentator, Vivion later became a television host on PBS, interviewing artists and public thinkers, before turning to painting as a meditative practice — one she describes as an attempt to “capture the peace of prayer and bring it onto the canvas.”
Working between expressionism and surrealism, Vivion employs saturated tones, textured brushwork and the movement of fabric to convey emotional and spiritual intensity. Elements of magical realism subtly surface, allowing the sacred and the ordinary to coexist within the same pictorial space. Her paintings feel both intimate and archetypal, rooted in lived experience while gesturing toward the timeless.
Vivion is a graduate of Columbia University, where she studied international human rights and finance. She was a New Crits Artist in Residence (2025) and lives and works between Harlem and Dubai.
Vivion says: “’The Ummah’ is a series of paintings that work together as a visual meditation on faith, community and spiritual inheritance. As a Black American revert to Islam, my path has taken me across the Middle East, Europe and Latin America, seeking belonging in unfamiliar places and uncovering kinship in the sacred gestures of devotion.”
“Each painting centers on moments of prayer, communion and interior reflection. Whether kneeling in solitude or shoulder to shoulder in communal worship, these scenes evoke a collective yearning. The repetition of forms in prayer suggests not anonymity but unity: a spiritual architecture built upon mutual responsibility. In a world increasingly defined by individualism, “The Ummah” honors the fraternal ethos at the heart of Islamic tradition and celebrates the shared blossoming that occurs when we make space for one another’s growth before a God that loves and sees all.
“This work reflects the resilience of faith in the face of erasure and prejudice. A resistance to orientalist projections of Islam, these figures stand vibrant, grounded and spiritually luminous at the forefront of the faith. Through color, posture and gaze, I aim to honor the richness of Islamic life as it unfolds across the African diaspora, reminding us that we too are part of a global lineage of seekers, and the struggle within is as urgent and critical as the struggle for liberation without.”
