Artist Statement: Black mood (left) is how many felt after the presidential election. Side-eye (center) is the anger at executive orders that are benign in title but insidious in practice. Oasis (right) is the  mindfulness that anchors the spirit, believing communal empathy will eventually trump the lust for power.

Artist Bio: Adetola Abatan is an artist, musician, curator and public art project manager based in Seattle, WA. She considers herself a polymath with interests in art, science, history as well as theology, and sees these fields as complimentary modes of knowledge to understand our world. Her collage artwork has been featured at Onyx Gallery, Wa Na Wari, Nepantla Cultural Arts Gallery, Mini Mart City Park, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Bumbershoot, Northwest Folklife, PCC Stores and PublicDisplayArt magazine. 

Her curatorial practice casts a critical eye towards arts institutions and questions their role in preserving stagnant ideas of black and brown inferiority, as well as the role of the Creative in challenging these practices. Her curation projects include the 2022 Blue is Our Color exhibit (Hedreen Gallery), the 2023 Future Cosmologies exhibit (Mad Art Gallery) and the 2026 Artist Choice exhibit (Frye Museum). She holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh as well as an MFA in Arts Leadership from Seattle University.