We are pleased to welcome Daniel Minter, an American painter, illustrator, and educator, to G.A.S. Foundation for his residency. His multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, drawing, printmaking, installation, and crafts, often addressing themes of displacement and diaspora informed by his extensive travels across Africa and the wider African Diaspora. Beyond his artistic practice, Daniel is the co-founder and artist director of Indigo Arts Alliance, a Maine-based arts incubator that addresses the underrepresentation of Black and Brown artists by fostering dialogue and exchange through a multidisciplinary residency program rooted in a Black-led approach to creativity, community-building, and mentorship.
During his eight-week residency, Daniel will split his time between G.A.S. Lagos and the G.A.S. Farm House in Ikiṣẹ. While he will spend some time in Lagos conducting research in the G.A.S. Library and Picton Archive, the majority of his residency will be focused on the tranquil setting of the farm house. His focus will be on creative inquiry and technical development, producing preparatory studies for larger works across painting and printmaking, including relief prints in linoleum and woodblock. Daniel hopes to establish a deep relationship with the farm’s ecosystem and surrounding community, drawing inspiration from seasonal patterns, indigenous flora and fauna, and conversations with local residents whose lived knowledge of the land informs their daily practices. He also plans to engage with Nigeria’s cultural landscape more broadly, with visits to sites such as the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, the Iganran Pottery Community, Nike Gallery in Osogbo, the Museum of West African Art in Benin City, and a range of museums and cultural centers in Lagos and Ijebu.
Universe of Freedom Making. Image courtesy of Michael Duncan.
What is the current focus of your creative practice?
My artistic practice is deeply rooted in the recovery and continuation of ancestral threads obscured by historical injustices. Influenced by my rural Southern upbringing and the Afro-Atlantic experience, I strive to weave these threads into every creation, viewing my art as a form of cultural preservation and transmission. My paintings and relief carvings, acting as narrative chapters, reflect this commitment. My past work, with its focus on interconnectedness and the development of a unique visual vocabulary, directly informs my current practice. I have cultivated “keys”—motifs rooted in Black history and echoing symbols from the Caribbean, Africa, and Brazil—to unlock ancestral wisdom. I am continually expanding this exploration, aiming to create a space where indigenous inheritance is revealed. The themes of resilience, resistance, healing, and renewal—central to my earlier work—continue to drive my practice, allowing me to articulate the enduring spirit of indigenous ways of being.
In Language of Trees. Image courtesy of the artist.
What drew you to apply for this residency and how do you think it will inform your wider practice?
What draws me to this residency is the profound opportunity to reconnect with ancestral roots in their original context. Being situated on a rural Nigerian farm, founded by a respected Nigerian artist, offers an invaluable chance to experience firsthand the land and agricultural practices that shaped the cultural foundations I explore in my work. This direct connection to the source—the soil, rhythms, and traditions that my ancestors carried across the Atlantic—promises to deepen my understanding of the "keys" and motifs I've been developing. The rural farm setting mirrors my own Southern upbringing while providing access to indigenous Nigerian artistic traditions and spiritual practices that were disrupted by the diaspora.
Can you give us an insight into how you hope to use the opportunity?
Working within the Nigerian landscape—the actual soil and rhythms that shaped my cultural DNA—could expand my vocabulary of "keys" and the motifs I have been developing. The daily immersion in indigenous agricultural practices and seasonal cycles will establish new creative pathways between my Southern rural upbringing and West African ancestry, creating a conceptual bridge that informs all future work. I am most excited that the residency will activate material and spiritual integration. Collaborating with local artisans, learning traditional techniques like adinkra printing and ceramics, will unearth ways I might reinterpret ancient methods within my own practice.
A Distant Holla, Currency Exchange, mixed media sculpture installation, 60 x 45 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
About Daniel Minter
Daniel Minter is a painter, illustrator, and educator whose work explores themes of displacement and diaspora, spirituality, and the recreation of meanings of home. In his richly textured bas-relief and mixed media assemblages, Minter employs diverse materials including metal, wood, twine, and clay to construct an iconography of the Afro-Atlantic experience rooted in resilience, resistance, and healing. Of his motivating force, he explains, "I want to channel my ancestors, I want them to know that they have projected out into the future." Minter's visual artwork is informed by extensive travel across the African Diaspora. These experiences have deepened his understanding and expanded his spiritual consciousness in ways that continue to nurture his life and work. Minter co-founded Indigo Arts Alliance, a nonprofit artist residency and incubator for creative scholarship dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of Black and Brown people globally.
Photo of Daniel Minter. Image courtesy of the artist and Marcia Minter.
About Indigo Arts Alliance
Addressing the underrepresentation of Black and Brown artists–Maine-based and worldwide–IAA is an arts incubator in Portland, Maine that provides space for dialogue and exchange between artists of African descent and other communities of color through a multidisciplinary artist-in-residency program that embodies a Black-led approach to creativity, community-building, and mentoring. Artists represent a rich diversity of cultural heritages from countries including African American/US, Belize, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, and Trinidad.
The organization is rooted in two principles: that art is a key resource for healthy human communities that should be cultivated and celebrated, and that artists play a unique role in strengthening our multiracial democracy. Actively contributing to the Global Black Arts Movement, Indigo Arts Alliance brings its principles to life through collaborations with national and international galleries, museums, and other venues, featuring exhibitions and performances by its AiRs, while also curating symposia and other community engagement activities.
Daniel Minter's residency is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
