Angie Epifano

Angie Epifano works on West African art and the art of the African Diaspora in Brazil, with a focus on the seventeenth to late-nineteenth centuries. Her research interests include Islamic art and architecture in West Africa, issues of cultural exchange between African actors, and the intersection of material culture and political power. Her dissertation project, “Building the Samorian State: Material Culture, Architecture, and Cities across West Africa,” traces how Samorian visual systems were refined and used to forcibly connect four West African cities, and conversely, how cities and their inhabitants resisted Samorian control.

Angie holds her M.A. from the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She graduated summa cum laude from Lewis & Clark College, receiving a B.A. with honors in Art History and Gender Studies. Prior to Lewis & Clark, she attended Amherst College, where she studied Studio Art with a focus on photography.

Her second article, “Commerce and Colonialism in the Regalia of the Samorian State,” was published in the Summer 2020 issue of the journal African Arts. Her first article, entitled “The Image of Sékou Touré: Art and the Making of Postcolonial Guinea,” was published in 2019 in the edited volume, Fictions of African Dictatorships.

Angie has done extensive fieldwork and archival research throughout West Africa, Brazil, and Europe. Her research has been supported by a number of grants, including a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, a Conference Travel Grant from the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, the Brazil Initiation Scholarship from the Brazil Studies Association, and a Tinker Field Research Grant for studies in Latin America. She is deeply committed to advancing pedagogy in African Studies and diversifying the field of the History of Art.